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Heroic action of Navy Seas free captain from pirates. They parachuted down at night into the ocean with a ton of gear on; and then, it took 3 simultaneous shots from 3 Navy Seals to take out 3 pirates. It is the stuff of movies. Yay Seals!!

A document from the Homeland Security Department to local law enforcement officials about right wing extremists is leaked.

The story that you did not read last week: we have sophisticated missile tracking equipment which could have been used (tested) for the North Korean missile launch. The White House reasoned that this would be seen by the North Korean’s as a hostile act and they would walk out of the six-party talks. They walked.

Rush Limbaugh calls the mainstream media stenographers for the Obama administration.

“The number of tea-baggers was not particularly large by American protest standards.” Rachel Maddow.

“The Republican-conservative movement has now crystalized into the white power movement.” Janeane Garofalo to Keith Olbermann. Olbermann then seriously asks, “Is that not a bad long-term political strategy?” Political discourse like this is why more people watch FoxNews than CNN, MSNBC, and Headline News put together.

When asked if Obama is watching the tea parties, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said, "I don't know if the president is aware of the events." 200,000 people marching in the streets on tax day, and President Obama is possibly unaware of this? I recall one Democrat friend of mine who almost had a cow when it turned out Bush did not know how much a gallon of gas was (why would any president know this?).

When Greta Van Susteren was talking to Glenn Beck at the San Antonio tea party, Greta said, “It sounds like Texas is going to secede,” to which the crowd roared in approval. Glenn then said, “They love America; they just think Texas does America best” which got another big cheer.

Dennis Miller remarked, “Even the President’s new dog has his barks on a teleprompter.”

Karen Hanretty remarked, “If we have a summit to fight global warming, why can’t we have a summit to fight piracy?”

Iran arrests Iranian-American journalist and convicts her of spying. She was sentenced to 8 years in prison.

Israel is preparing for an attack on Iran to take out its nuclear facilities (here, Obama should count himself lucky).

[With regards to the YouTube problem, which I have had on two computers—for reasons which I do not understand, the volume on the YouTube videos themselves on my computer were turned down all the way. Don’t ask me why or why that was the case on 2 computers. If you have this problem, then check the volume on the video itself (it is at the bottom of the video on the right-hand side)—for all I know, I may be the only person in the world with that problem].

You need to see this video; you will be looking at the face of Satan; and it will be clear why you need to be concerned. You need to hear what our enemies are thinking and what they plan to do:

Another okay homemade Sacto tea party vid from a Sacto realtor (note, I don’t believe there are any political speakers at this event):

I am sure that you can find footage of the tea party which took place near you as well by doing a search on YouTube or Google.

CNN’s Susan Roesgen, shows up to a Tea Party and gives these participants a harder time than any CNN reporter gave Obama when it comes to questioning; when she did not get the answers she wanted, she moved away, summed up the Tea Party as “Anti-government, anti-CNN, highly promoted by the right-wing conservative network Fox...and this is not really family viewing...” while there is no swearing which I heard, no hand gestures, no obscene or semi-obscene names bandied about (e.g., Tea Baggers, an obscene term actually used by at least 2 networks during prime time news segments to describes the participants of these tea parties). Watch it and judge for yourself; also included is the portion not caught by CNN reporters, but by an bystander:

In fact, “Obama, if you want to raise your popularity, get a dog and kill somebody.”

Strong foreign policy and traditional values is all over, according to Chuck Schumer.

Compare this to the Obama economics speech in Georgetown this week (part I; the rest are there as well):

1) Oh, the irony of it all! John Ziegler, who did the film, How Obama Got Elected, is a journalist. USC was giving the Walter Cronkite Journalist Award to Katy Couric for her interview with Sarah Palin, and John went to cover the event and ask people questions (which is the kind of thing a journalist does). He also was giving away copies of his video Media Malpractice. The police captured him (we cannot have a journalist reporting on this sort of event and asking questions), handcuffed him, took some of his property, and almost arrested him, when they realized that what do you charge a journalist with when he is covering the giving away of a journalistic award?

Here is his site, and there is a link to the video of his arrest (it was done by a 3^rd party).

2) Finally, someone agrees with me. Fred Thompson on the radio said that everyone needs to pay taxes, no matter how much they make. His only problem is, he says the poor should pay at least a dollar of their income. I think that they need to pay a percentage of their income, and that needs to be no less than 5% (+ their social security burden).

3) In case you do not get it, the problem with Obama releasing the CIA/Bush documents is, it tells our enemies how we operate and what we are doing, so that they can better train their people to resist interrogation when captured. It is not unlike releasing all of the technology on our anti-missile capabilities. It was a stupid thing for Obama to do; however, he does not appear to live in the real world with real-world threats. He looks ahead from hour-to-hour to the temporary adulation he will get from the left for doing such things. If Obama does not want to order the CIA to do enhanced interrogation (or, at least say this publically), fine. Just don’t give away the store.

4) I want you to notice this subtle progression. For the past decade or more, conservative speakers could not speak uninterrupted on most college campuses. They might be invited by groups who are interested in what they have to say, but radicals on campus will disrupt these speeches in any way possible. Most colleges and universities stay out of this, believing that the protestors have the right to their free speech as well (which means to, for all intents and purposes, to shut down the free speech of a conservative speaker). As these college students are encouraged and start to get out into the world, what do you think is going to happen to free speech off the college campus? Congress has been putting such things as the Fairness Doctrine out there or localism or diversity of ownership in order to attack conservative radio. In other industries, Obama is seizing power over these industries to make them do what he wants them to do. At what point will he seize radio stations and require that ownership be transferred to someone else (of course, a liberal owner) who will kill conservative talk on that station?

5) The New York Times headline reads: “Interrogation Memos Detail Harsh Tactics by the C.I.A.” [emphasis mine] This is known as giving an opinion in a news story; and not only does the Times give their opinion, but they put it in the headline. If you know nothing about journalism, this is not supposed to be done. You run a headline like this in the editorial pages. In my opinion, the interrogation techniques were far tamer than I realized.

6) The argument I have heard from several people is, sit back, calm down and let Obama fix the problem. If he does not do a good job, then just elect someone else. So, let me offer an analogy. Let’s say you just got married, and on day one of your marriage, your wife goes out and spends $50,000, putting it on your credit cards. Let’s say she goes shopping on day two, and then puts you in debt for another $50,000. Now, do you say anything, or do you simply wait for her to adjust to marriage and to the idea of a budget. Let’s say that every single day, she goes out and adds an additional $50,000 to your debt, at what point do you put your foot down? Let say her argument is, “Well, your monthly bills are less now than they were last month” because you have not yet gotten the bills for her spending spree, is that a good argument? Congress and President Obama are on a spending spree far beyond anything the Bush administration ever imagined; do we need to wait? If Obama promotes a budget with a deficit double that of George Bush’s largest budget, should we not say something?

7) As far as I can tell, no prominent Republicans or conservatives were asked to speak at any of the tea parties, even though some were in attendance (like Michael Reagan at the Sacramento Tea Party). The tea party organizers I heard speak (and news here is not in abundance, as this event was not covered fairly and objectively) said that was intentional. If this was supposed to be a coalition of FoxNews and the Republican party, why were there not top Republicans speaking at any of these tea parties? Since FoxNews was at 4 or 5 Tea Parties, they did have cameras and sound equipment, so for the hour a host was on the air, he would broadcast most of his or her remarks to the people there.

8) The Obama administration just killed 3 Black, teenage pirates (it is not even clear if they are of age yet) from a failed state. Madoff has been sentenced to a tiny cell for the rest of his natural life. But, that we threatened to put a terrorist into a confined area with a caterpillar that he believes is poisonous andwe put a couple of other terrorists under a water faucet for less than a minute (with a doctor standing by); and that is torture and ought to be exposed and condemned?

9) Solving the US problem with pirates should be easy; you put armed marshals on every US ship (and US ships only). This needs to be a quick, unilateral decision. If the rest of the world wants US help, then Obama needs to set out some ground rules (e.g., there will be a coalition to establish a US base in Somalia from which we will deal with pirate attacks, and this will be in exchange for more troops for Afghanistan).

10) As Rush and others observed, our being in Iraq increased the number of terrorists there and caused the Iraqis and others to become terrorists. Why don’t we hear this about our action in Somalia? Won’t there be more pirates because of our action?

11) Cable news stations, other than Fox, have found that they no longer have to back up anything which they say. Therefore, because they find a mention of Tea Parties on the website of a Republican, they conclude that the Republicans started and encouraged these tea parties. They no longer hide their political opinions. They are all Obama and all government all the way. If anyone questions what Obama does or says, or anything which the Congress does, they will attack and discredit that person.

12) I am from the era of baby boomers who all read the book 1984. What amazes me is, most of the people who read that book with me do not see it happening right now before their eyes.

13) Our Supreme Court justices are there to interpret the constitution. They take an oath to uphold the constitution. If it is not in our constitution or in one of the laws which we passed, then they do not get to render an opinion on it. However, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, has made it clear that she believes that we ought to cite international law when it is appropriate. All this means is, “I have no reason for making the ruling which I am about to make, so let me find some law of some other country which justifies my position.” Quoting law from another country would be like saying, “In Iran, they cut off a person’s hand for stealing, so, Charley Brown, sorry to say, but in this case, we are going to cut off your hand.” It is an outrageous example, I admit; but that is what is going on when a justice appeals to some other national or so-called international law in order to make a ruling.

14) Obama needs to show some leadership and some normal male egression on this piracy thing. Giving the go-ahead to shoot those 3 pirates was a good first step. He needs to continue in that direction.

15) I found myself agreeing with Bob Beckel, a Democratic strategist (I think he ran a presidential campaign?). He wants to see the elimination of government-support of faith-based organizations. I agree. If such an organization wants to function, fantastic; the government should not get in its way. However, the government should not be donating money directly to any faith-based organization. The more we can separate the government from our faith and our business, the better off we will be.

16) I hope that you noticed that there were almost no pre-manufactured signs at any of the tea parties. These were signs that people made in their garages and living rooms and on their kitchen tables. Go back and look at the G20 protestors. Are you now surprised how many of these signs are manufactured? Now go back and look at the Obama campaign. Almost 100% pre-manufactured signage. Although there may have been some candidate signs, I did not see any. There were some Republican party signs, but I saw more signs indicating disgruntlement with Republicans. Now, see if you can figure out which movements started from the top down and which started as a grass roots movement.

17) Some of the signs included, “No more fiscal child abuse,” “Stop the pirates in Congress,” “I fought for my country, work and pay taxes so liberals don’t have to,” and “CNN, you suck.”

18) Just in case you think those who attended the tea parties are unbelievably stupid and need someone from CNN to school them so that they understand that they are getting a tax break from Obama—people understand that when the government runs a deficit, it will have to be paid for my either higher taxes or by loss of earnings and savings via inflation. Since Obama is proposing historically large deficits, we know that this will cost us—it may not be this year, but it will cost us. Furthermore, most of us are disturbed by where the money is going. We did not like this under Bush, and we like it less under Obama.

19) Since it looks like Obama cannot get the cap and trade which he wants through Congress, he is bypassing Congress and putting this into the hands of the EPA, who can unilaterally enact the most Draconian environmental measures.

20) Obama appears to be quite confused as to America’s historical place in the world. Ronald Reagan compared our country to a shining light on a hill, and this is in accordance with most of the history he had personally observed. Look at the greatest economies in the world: Japan,

Germany, France, South Korea—all of these nations owe a great debt to the United States. President George Bush, since he is a well-read president (far more well-read than Obama), could see that you do not just bring your military into an area or bring your ideology into an area and just leave a couple years later. After the conflict is over, there needs to be other steps taken. Unlike Clinton and unlike his own father, George W. Bush began those types of steps in Iraq and in Afghanistan. You may or may not like nation-building, but these are nations that we left as strong and independent allies. Were we have failed has been in places like Iran, Somalia, Kosovo, South Africa, Rhodesia and the first few plays we engaged in, in Iraq. Where we have acted unilaterally, where we have engaged in nation-building, and where we sought to leave behind a strong, independent ally, we have done good. Where we have engaged in a half-hearted war, where we have withdrawn before the job was done, where we have exerted political pressure to achieve some popular political change (e.g., in Iran, Rhodesia and South Africa), the end result ought to be apologized for. Because Obama is thoroughly entrenched in a liberal philosophy of this world, and unable to actually see what is crystal clear before his eyes (the successes in German, Japan, South Korea; and the failures in Rhodesia, South Africa and Iran), Obama simply apologized to the wrong people. When a president decides to involve itself with another nation, exit-strategy should not be first and foremost on that president’s mind, but the vision and transformation that president wants to see for that particular part of the world.

21) When you saw or heard the headline, “Clinton to freeze pirate booty,” did you have a disturbing image in your head as well?

The Obama tax cuts, found in the recovery package, are rebates of $400/year for the next 2 years ($800/couple). A little better than a dollar a day.

The average 20 year old will pay $114,000 just to cover the interest of the debt that Obama has already run up.

When we talk about millions, billions and trillions of dollars, it is hard for most people to get a grasp of that. To help you out, there are roughly 300 million people in the United States and the deficit so far this year is about $1 trillion (that is $1,000,000 million). So, based upon what Congress and Obama have done so far, that is about $3,333 debt for every single person, so far this year. Congress still has another 9 months to go for this year. They have just gotten started.

Rasmussen this week: 42% say cutting the deficit is the top priority; 24% name health care; 17%, want to develop new sources of energy; and 10% rate the president's educational initiative as the most important issue.

In Spain, every 1 Green job created by the government resulted in the loss of 2.2 jobs in the private sector.

Janeane Garofalo saying that the Republican-conservative movement has morphed into a white supremacy movement and Keith Olbermann seriously asking if this is a good long-term political move.

The CNN woman attacking the participants at the tea party and pulling away her microphone before they are able to complete a thought.

I suspect that if SNL does cover the tea parties, the participants will be portrayed as stupid, ignorant of history and possibly as racists.

The president considers radical technologies to cool the atmosphere, e.g. shooting pollutants into the upper atmosphere.

I watched Evan Bayh on Chris Wallace and was reasonably impressed. Now, quite obviously, I an very soured on Obama, as he says one thing, but does something entirely different, meaning that you cannot trust for one moment anything he says. Obviously, some politicians from both parties are like that; but Obama far more than anyone else I can recall. Anyway, in listening to Bayh, and his belief in fiscal responsibility, and his opposition to Obama’s overspending, makes him seem like a pretty good guy to me, even though he is a Democrat. As a strong conservative, Bayh, of the Democrats, seems like one of the least objectionable.

Obama says he is not going to push through any additional gun legislation. I have learned, in the past several months, not to trust anything that he says. However, he says it is because he is unable to do it. That is nonsense, as he and the Democratic Congress can do basically anything that they want to do. So, my take-away from what he says is that particular lie rather than him lying about not intending to pass more gun legislation. However, as in all things that Obama says, who really knows?

But the top House Democrat with oversight of the Department of Homeland Security Bennie Thompson of Mississippi said in a letter to Ms. Napolitano that he was "dumbfounded" that she would issue the Department of Homeland Security that she did. "This report appears to raise significant issues involving the privacy and civil liberties of many Americans - including war veterans," said Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, in his letter sent Tuesday night.

[New Regular Feature: More than any president that I recall, President Obama tends to use language very carefully, to, in my opinion, obfuscate what he is doing rather than to clarify. This seems to part and parcel of the Obama campaign and now of the Obama presidency. This has become a mainstay of the Democratic party as well.]

When an Obama spokesman was asked to comment about this document sent by the White House to law enforcement officials, the response was:

"The President is focused not on politics but rather taking the steps necessary to protect all Americans from the threat of violence and terrorism regardless of its origins. He also believes those who serve represent the best of this country, and he will continue to ensure that our veterans receive the respect and benefits they have earned." (White House spokesman Nick Shapiro).

Obama has promises to revamp and/or simplify the tax code, which, in itself, is a good idea. Again, watch what he does, not what he says.

Obama said this week, “The states are going to have to make hard choices, and we need to tighten our belts here in Washington as well.” At the same time, the Obama budget, bailouts, and TARP spending dwarfs any spending of any administration or Congress ever (not in the overall amounts, but as a percentage of GNP, which is more accurate method of comparison).

Obama on education, “We are committed to fixing our public school system” while phasing out the DC scholarships which allow some poor DC residents to put their children into private schools.

Do you or do you not stand behind the recent report on right wing extremists released by your Homeland Security Department? Please respond with a clear yes or no.

If you think the tea parties were Republican organizations from the top down or that these were mostly disgruntled McCain voters.

There are two possible reasons for the report released by the Homeland Security Department: (1) they actually believe that there is a real chance that veterans and conservatives will be easily sucked into some sort of anti-government militia movement or (2) they intend on monitoring (wiretapping) right-wing groups and individuals and this essentially gives them the okay to do it. “These are potential terrorists, so we need to keep an eye on them.” Remember, Obama has not dismantled Bush’s wiretapping policy.

Obama putting the EPA in charge of greenhouse gases is going to be one of the most far-reaching things which Obama has done. The cost to the consumer, with whatever repressive regulations they come up with, is going to have repressive effects upon our society and our economic growth. This is the first major step in the coalescence of the government and religion (earth-worship).

The farthest left dictatorships of South and Central America gave a litany of requests, demands and complaints to President Obama today; he will not only ponder these seriously, but he will give in to almost every single one.

Obama has called for Cuba to release its political prisoners. Cuba will instead demand that the United States take these people and then Castro #1 or 2 will give us a bunch of actual criminals to put into our society rather than dissenters.

I said that the anger and hatred on the left will not just disappear, even though Obama has been elected. Here is one example of that:

One of the things which I found infuriating during the Bush administration is, according to a large group of people, George Bush could never do anything right. After he did something—no matter what it was—he would be incessantly criticized. Obama took up this mantle, which I will cover in the next article.

Both Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity looked for anything about Obama and the rescue of Captain Richard Phillips to criticize. I really do not see the point here.

It is true that the Navy Seals did all of the work and that there were few reasonable choices at this point other than to take these pirates out; but Obama made the right choice and he should get some credit for this. The press is going overboard on it; but then, Rush and Hannity are far too critical.

When Obama gets something right—like his continuing the Bush policies in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and with regards to wiretapping, he should be given credit. I disliked seeing Bush nitpicked for everything under the sun; and I would hate for Republicans and conservatives to take up the same tact with Obama. I really don’t care that the tactic worked; my problem is, the tactic is disingenuous and lacks a true moral foundation.

When Obama gets something wrong—his criticism of America overseas, his nation-bankrupting budget, his keeping anyone from the Bush treasury department on board—he should be soundly criticized.

We need to continue to disagree with the man because of the issues, not because he is the opposition.

When Bush was president and the Democrats came to power, they made a big thing out of a timetable for Iraq. Every time there was a request for money for Iraq, the Democrats attached a timetable to withdraw troops out of Iraq. Whereas, I don’t know how many times they did this, it seems like it was at least a dozen times. It was disingenuous and stupid. The Democrats in Congress under Bush could have, at any time, stopped funding the war in Iraq and that would have ended the war immediately. They had the majority, and any time during the last two years of the Bush administration, they could have ended the Iraq war. They chose not to.

Now Obama is president and he wants money for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Where are the incessant calls from the Democrats for an exit strategy? Where are the timetables affixed to the Obama bills for additional funds? One or two Democrats have spoken publically that they don’t think Obama is bringing the troops out fast enough—including Pelosi, the head of the House of Representatives. Harry Reid has publically stated that the war in Iraq is lost; so why aren’t they doing something about this? Why aren’t they putting pressure on their president to take the troops out of Iraq right now, or awhile ago (obviously, removing troops is a 16 month operation).

If you are an anti-war Democrat or an anti-Iraq war Democrat, you ought to be just a little hacked off at this point. Most of the Democratic candidates ran on the position of pulling troops out of Iraq as quickly as possible, but that just is not happening. The Democratic public rhetoric under Bush and during the campaign was very anti-Iraq war. So, why are we still there?

Don’t get me wrong—I am not advocating that we get out of Iraq. Despite my dismay at Obama being elected, I have to give him props here. He is continuing to fight the war in Iraq. That is a good thing, in my estimation. I supported the war when Bush was president and I support the war now that Obama is president.

When Bush was president, I cannot tell you how many anti-Bush emails that I got, castigating him for many things—and, at the top of the list was Iraq. So, now there is an anti-Iraq War president (so he said) and an anti-Iraq War Congress (so they said). Why are our soldiers still in Iraq? Why has no draw-down even begun?

One of the other main issues was wiretapping. Bush believed that he could legally wiretap anyone who communicated with possible terrorists outside of the United States without a warrant. I heard such a hue and cry over this illegal wiretapping that Bush did. I heard this from plenty of Democrats and from Obama as well. So, this wiretapping is still in place...why?

President Bush had the guts to take a position and stand by it. If you were fired up about the war in Iraq and illegal wiretapping, then where is your outrage now?

Club Gitmo: Obama promised to close Gitmo in one year. Personally, I think this is a stupid position to take, and I believe that when Bush is president and when Obama is president. I believe in issues; I believe that something is right or wrong, no matter who is the president. Obama could shut down Gitmo tomorrow, but he does not. This was another big deal to liberals and Democrats everywhere. Club Gitmo is still a going concern and it appears as though what will probably happen is, GItmo might be shut down and the prisoners just transferred to another camp.

One place where I agreed with Democratic outrage was with the Bush budgets. Now I was not insane over this, because there is a simple way to look at it. A deficit means that we are going a bit more in debt than we were the year before. We, as Americans, do this all of the time; we run up our credit cards. If you make $15,000/year, then $5000 in credit card debt is quite serious. If you make $150,000/year, then $5000 in credit card debt is nothing. Under Bush, the deficit was not unusually large compared to the GNP. So, this issue was not a big deal to me, but I would prefer little or no deficit if possible. During the years of 9/11 and Katrina, I would not think twice about a deficit; however, during the years without a serious nation-wide crisis, I would prefer the US to come closer to balancing the budget.

If you railed against the Bush deficits, where are you now? Obama makes Bush look like a piker! There is no comparison between Obama’s budget and Bush’s. Obama is not just deficit spending, he is deficit spending like no president has ever done before in the past, even adjusted for inflation.

If you are a Democrat and these were key issues to you during the campaign, where is your outrage now?

As an addendum to this article, there are far left zealots out there who do see the disconnect between what Obama promised and what he has delivered. One far-left comment I read was: Progressives need their own party. Obama just sent 22,000 troops to Afghanistan. He will not investigate the previous administration's war crimes. He is still spending way too much on defense. He has yet to get the troops out of Iraq. He is O.K. with letting telecom companies off the hook for spying on us. Is Obama another Fascist leader like Bush? Time will tell.

You may be surprised that, roughly a million years ago, I took a course in Journalism, and, as with many of my high school courses, it would be easier for me to recount the antics that we pulled on the teacher more than the content of the course material. However, I seem to recall that, within the first sentence, or, at least, within the first paragraph of a news story, you needed to answer the questions who, when, and what. Who was involved in this story. When did it occur? What exactly happened? Bonus points for being able to throw in why it happened.

Before these tea parties took place, there was almost a news blackout. I called up my mother in California (Sacramento) and asked her, a couple of days before the Sacramento tea party (one of the best attended tea parties across the nation), and she had heard nothing about it. She is not a political junkie by any means, nor is she a conservative, but she asked her friend, a Rush Limbaugh conservative, what she knew. She knew nothing about the tea parties. These are retired people and they will often watch and read the news both. My mom gets a daily newspaper, the Sacramento Bee.

My point here is, there were huge numbers of folks who did not even know that tea parties were going on, what they were, who was going or anything like that. My mom, being hipped to tea parties by me, was able to find an article in the Bee on them—a Paul Krugman editorial on the tea parties. You, of course, are welcome to follow the link to Krugman’s article, but my impression of Paul Krugman is, Obama is perhaps too moderate of a president for him (I read some Krugman columns and catch him on the Sunday political shows).

My mom’s takeaway from what happened at these tea parties was, these were a bunch of disgruntled Republicans who were carrying signs proclaiming that Obama was a Muslim and that Obama was not really born in the United States. That is what she told me. I watched about 2–3 hours of FoxNews coverage (and an hour by others), and never saw any sign like that.

In any case, that was what she knew about the tea parties—that this was a lame Republican movement, not really even grassroots, but an astro-turf movement. Paul did not mention the fact that Rush Limbaugh, the defacto head of the Republican party (according to the mainstream media) was not invited to speak at any of the tea parties, nor did he make himself available to speak. Michael Steele, the GOP chairman, was not invited to speak at any tea party, nor did he put himself out there as a speaker. Michael Reagan was at the Sacramento tea party, but as a participant, not as a speaker.

My point is, if you do not watch FoxNews, or you read your newspaper on the way to work, while you are exercising, or at the breakfast table, or if you listen to NPR in the morning on the radio on the way to work, you were probably not even aware that these tea parties went on. You might find yourself in agreement with the tea party goers and you may not, but the news did not want you to know that there is actually a significant group of people out there who do not like government overspending, and their thinking is not just about Barack Obama, but about George Bush as well and about the Republican Congress which began to spend a lot of money, followed by a Democratic Congress which began to spend even more money, followed by a Democratic president and Congress which began to spend even more money. The newspapers are invested in Obama. They do not want you to know that there are people who are actually concerned about this. If you accidentally find out, then they want you to believe that this is the work of the Republican party and that this was attended by only conservatives, because only conservatives are concerned about what is going on right now, and that, only out of sour grapes.

I talked to a person in Singapore the other day, and bemoaned our news coverage here, and she was not particularly upset. Her government runs the news there and news stories are mostly government-approved for publication. I did not get the full story on Singapore news, but it gave me an eerie feeling of what seems to have already come to pass in the United States.

Let’s do a comparison. Almost everyone knows about the bonuses the AIG executives received and about how demonstrators actually went to the private homes of these executives and demonstrated (we don’t know how they got there and who organized it and how they got these addresses—our news does not seem to have any interest in finding out anything for us anymore). Here, we might be dealing with a few thousand demonstrators in a dozen cities. We all know something about that. Yet there are huge pockets of people who know nothing about these tea parties.

Some news outlets did cover these tea parties. On a blog, someone called tea party goers tea baggers, which, in case you don’t know, is a sexual term (I do not intend to explain this term or to draw you a picture), and I think that it is reasonable to understand that, when someone calls you a tea bagger, it is meant as a derogatory term. CNN and MSNBC used this term for more often than the term tea parties, and the little coverage which they gave the tea parties heaped disdain upon the participants and who they saw as the organizers of these tea parties (FoxNews and the Republican party). Here is their reasoning: FoxNews (1) covered the tea parties in advance and (2) promised that they would show up at these tea parties and do 4 or 5 shows from the tea parties themselves. Therefore, FoxNews was organizing and promoting these tea parties, as virtually no other news organization was reporting on these tea parties and most did not attend any of the tea parties.

The end result was, huge pockets of people were not even aware that these tea parties were going on. Some who did saw this as some kook fringe element or disgruntled Republicans who just do not like Obama, because that is what their news told them to think.

In terms of numbers, which are very hard to get, because news organizations did not want to do any reporting on this, one of the best articles I read was:

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/04/how-many-attended-tea-parties.html (this seems to be a very good article, and quite conservative when it comes to the numbers—they suggest 3500 in Sacramento, whereas Neil Cavuto first guesses 5000 off camera with someone else, and then suggests on camera that there might be twice or even thrice that many there).

They give the figures for 126 rallies, which range in number from thousands down to a couple dozen. All in all, their list yields over 100,000 people—hardly the largest demonstration in the United States—but not paltry when the news blackout and bias is taken into account. I have heard estimates as high as 2300 cities hosting tea parties on Wednesday last, and they give the figure 750 nationwide.

No matter what you think about conservatives, the Republicans, Obama or the tea parties, this is a story which should have been fairly covered by all newspapers and all news organizations. Because these are people who disagree with Obama policies (and Bush’s policies as well), the news did its best to ignore this story and the thoughts, opinions and motivations of over 100,000 Americans who chose to take a stand on Tax Day to make their feelings known.

It suddenly strikes me that, there must have been hundreds of thousands of people who drove by these demonstrations, or saw them from their office buildings, and then, our of curiosity, turned on their local news that night, looked through their news paper the next morning, or checked with network news, and were surprised to find, in most cases, no coverage, and, in a few cases, disdaining coverage, implying that only a handful of people were showing up.

So, go to your favorite news site and see how it was covered. What do you remember about the news coverage which you watched on tv? Did you see anything at all in your newspaper which even resembled fair and balanced? Did you see anything at all?

NPR did one fairly long story on the tea parties—it was nearly a 2 minutes story. No clue was given as to how widespread they were, how many had occurred prior to April 15^th, how many cities were hosting tea parties that day. And, of course, FoxNews was presented as the cheerleader of these tea parties (I guess when only Fox covered this event with any detail, then the other news services can call Fox a cheerleader, which most of them did).

Most of the article was all about how Tea Party was not the best designation for these convocations. Literally half of the article was the writer musing as to why tea party just is not a good choice for the name of these gatherings. How meaningless?

Short mention of Napolitano’s report, where she says that her report is simply an assessment.

Large, watertight containers for recycling in Houston, plus hybrid vehicles to use to pick them up.

New bill which allows police to arrest people who refuse to identify themselves.

Cartels in Mexico and Obama going to Mexico (which, of these stories, is an important story).

Morning Edition did not ignore the Tea Parties: here it their story on the 2300 tea parties which occurred. I do not want to ignore what they said; I do not want to make it seem like they blew off coverage. So, for that reason, I want to reproduce their entire story. Settle in, grab a cub of coffee (or tea, sit back, and give it a critical read, and see how public radio covered what one of the largest demonstration/rally/protest’s in US history):

Morning Edition, April 16, 2009 · Anti-tax protesters wanted to dump a million tea bags outside the White House. They didn't have the right permit to unload them. Then it rained. Finally a protester threw a box of tea bags on the White House lawn. The protest ended with a Secret Service robot sniffing the suspicious package.

That is a fair and honest assessment, is it not? That was their complete story for Thursday, but, to be fair, we did have to know about these new recycling containers and the renovation story on the Houston hotel, so they are constrained. That was the entire story, by the way.

Oh, by the way, you paid for that. It was your tax dollars which paid for that story. Now, do you feel like you got your money’s worth? Do you feel like you got an honest, next-day examination of April’s 15^th’s tea parties?

[the story about Obama going to Mexico was longer than 5 minutes and it included a look back to when the Kennedy’s went to Mexico and how Jackie spoke a few words of Spanish to the crowd, so, again, it was a busy, busy news day, so perhaps I should not complain that they did not really have time to examine the tea parties].

The only good thing about the NPR story are the comments. The readers provided more comments, more facts, and mo information of interest than did the NPR article.

Conservatives oppose a lot of funding, like for NPR, and I used to wonder why. Now, I have come to realize, all NPR is, is an arm of liberal thinking. They are not interested in giving a full report on anything which might contradict liberal thinking. These tea parties contradict liberal thinking, so they were essentially ignored. So, no, I really don’t want my tax dollars to go to something which is not much more than an arm of the Democratic party.

...and you are reading this, I commend you, whether you agree with me or not. This means that you possibly are willing to look at several sides of an issue, or to take in several viewpoints. Part of my own liberal upbringing was to consider other viewpoints and to listen to other people’s opinions (in fact, that is how I became a conservative).

In this issue, I have given you several approaches to, for instance, the tea parties. You could read and/or watch to see how FoxNews handled them and ditto for the approach of CNN and MSNBC. I am hoping that you notice a contrast in the way that this event was covered. There were various people who gave their opinions of these tea parties, and I think that it is important for you to evaluate which approach seemed to be the most objective and even-handed.

I hope that, as you read these articles, that you notice, I have mentioned such things as Obama’s birth certificate (I think I mentioned it one time along with a link, if memory serves), but you will notice that I never dwelt on this issue much. I have heard good arguments from both sides, but the best argument seems to be, Obama’s mother is an American, so, no matter where he was born, he is probably going to be considered an American by most courts in this land.

However, what I have endeavored to do is offer up logical arguments and approaches on what I personally view as potentially the worst president in American history (the key word there is potentially).

When it comes to issues of sharp-divide, e.g. abortion, the war in Iraq, homosexual marriage, that I have attempted to make reasonable and logical arguments, without calling those who believe differently names. There was a small group of people who protested on behalf of the cop-killer in Oakland, and, even though I found this to be repulsive, I did not bother to make up some derogatory name for them, like tea baggers.

If you are a liberal, I want you to pay close attention to the way that FoxNews approaches a story and how CNN (or MSNBC) approaches a story. If the organization disapproves of this or that group, do they find some demeaning name by which to call them? Do they offer up real facts and figures, or do they dramatically slant their reporting. When there are discussions, do you actually hear opposing viewpoints?

If you are a liberal, I want you to realize above all else that conservatives are not made up of rich white racists with no motivation for their thoughts and opinions other than to hold onto the money that they have. I want you to realize that we are not mind-numbed robots who go out there everyday to do the bidding of Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity. Most of the conservatives I know are well-informed and thoughtful. Most of the conservatives I know do not jump on every single thing that Obama does and find something wrong with it. Most of the conservatives I know do not hold to some meaningless issue, like Bo with a bone (like, is Obama a secret Muslim?).

One more thing: I want you to know that we conservatives do not walk lock-step on every issue. I have heard arguments from conservatives for and against Obama starting to normalize relations with Cuba. Like Krauthammer, I remain an agnostic on this issue, although I favor Obama’s approach so far. There are places that most conservatives agree on (limited government, restraint in government spending , a strong national presence and a strong prepared military, life over death) and places where we do not agree (the best system of taxation, for instance; or how far do we involve ourselves in the affairs of other nations).

I only ask of you one thing: listen to our arguments, do not dismiss them immediately, and if you are unsure of this or that issue, then explore it more fully, listening to liberals, conservatives and moderates on that issue. Do not be afraid to differ from your general political alliance on any political issue. When this or that person resorts to name-calling, please realize, that means that they are out of arguments.

You may or may not know that the US Department of Homeland Security under Janet Napolitano sent to various law enforcement agencies an assessment of rightwing extremism from their office of Intelligence and Analysis. If you have not seen it, there will be a link to the actual report. Almost immediately, law enforcement officials (presumably) leaked this report to the outside world (the second footnote warns not to leak this document).

The short summation is, Homeland Security warns law enforcement agencies that there may be some sort of active backlash from certain conservatives, and here is how to identify them.

From the document itself: This product is one of a series of intelligence assessments published by the Extremism and Radicalization Branch to facilitate a greater understanding of the phenomenon of violent radicalization in the United States. The information is provided to federal, state, local, and tribal counterterrorism and law enforcement officials so they may effectively deter, prevent, preempt, or respond to terrorist attacks against the United States.

I want you to notice in their own document that we are talking about terrorists; even though this administration seems to refuse to apply this particular term to actual Islamic terrorists.

Right up front in this document, the authors of this document admit that they do not have any hard evidence of any domestic rightwing terrorists planning any acts of terror, they still warn The possible passage of new restrictions on firearms and the return of military veterans facing significant challenges reintegrating into their communities could lead to the potential emergence of terrorist groups or lone wolf extremists capable of carrying out violent attacks. It is as if they are writing the plot for a movie and pitching it. There is nothing out there to indicate that any of this sort of thing is going on.

They do cite the example of 22-year-old Richard Poplawski, who opened fire on two Pittsburgh Police officers responding to a 911 call from Poplawski's mother, who was attempting to get the police officers to remove her son from the home. Trying to align this nutjob Poplawski with rightwing extremists is as logical as saying, “Now the Pollacks are out of control and we need to keep an eye on the Pollacks.” Or, there was that convicted felon, Levon Mixon, who killed several police officers in Oakland this year. Does this mean that Blacks are now organizing an armed rebellion against the United States?

Poplawski was a problem person who was tossed out of boot camp; who allegedly assaulted a girlfriend, and the thing which set off his domestic disturbance is his mother’s complaint about his pit bulls who were urinate on her carpets. This is not some far, far right conservative who is troubled by his government and wants to bring down the government. This is just a dangerous nutjob. Did he have some conservative leanings? Apparently he did. However, again, saying that this is some lone wolf conservative act possibly a warning sign of what is to come, is like saying we need to watch out for Pollacks. But, this is the example this report puts out there (along with 1995 Oklahoma City bombings). These are acts of nutjobs, not of people who disagree with this administration.

Another quote: Rightwing extremists are harnessing this historical election as a recruitment

tool. Many rightwing extremists are antagonistic toward the new presidential administration and its perceived stance on a range of issues, including immigration and citizenship, the expansion of social programs to minorities, and restrictions on firearms ownership and use. Rightwing extremists are increasingly galvanized by these concerns and leverage them as drivers for recruitment. From the 2008 election timeframe to the present, rightwing extremists have capitalized on related racial and political prejudices in expanded propaganda campaigns, thereby reaching out to a wider audience of potential

Conservatives might be galvanized somewhat against this administration and for some of the issues named here; but that does not make them dangerous rightwing extremists.

During the 1990s, these issues opposition to gun control, criticism of free trade agreements—which most conservatives agree with, by the way—and government infringement of civil rights] contributed to the growth in the number of domestic rightwing terrorist and extremist groups and an increase in violent acts targeting government facilities, law enforcement officers, banks, and infrastructure sectors.

I do recall the 1990's and I do not recall a vast quantity of rightwing extremist groups dotting the landscape. I recall many more examples of Islamic terrorists from this era.

Are there some rightwing nutjobs out there and maybe even some organizations? Probably, but no more than left-wing organizations or eco-terrorist organizations. And, what probably dwarfs these various groups are Islamic extremists who live right here in the United States.

There is a lot more in this report; this appears more to be the paranoid ramblings of a far-left ideologue more than a serious report which all law enforcement agencies ought to heed.

However, I think the real reason for putting this out there is, we have legitimate wiretapping of Islamic terrorists along with people in the United States who are communicating with terrorist suspects. I believe that this is going to give our government legal clearance to tap the phones of conservative groups. I do not think that they will use this to necessarily arrest those on the right, but to gather negative information which can otherwise found and then leaked; as well as to gain a tactical political advantage.

That is, Charley Brown may own some weapons or he may be a very conservative vet or he may be quite involved in this or that issue (rights of the unborn, for instance). This report gives the government legal standing to tap Charley Brown’s phone, as he exhibits many of the characteristics of a rightwing terrorist.

This does not have to be a federal wiretap. This might result in a federal officer suggesting to a local law enforcement official to keep his eye on Charley Brown, and to indicate that they are willing to grant wiretapping privileges on Charley Brown. Maybe I am sounding too paranoid here, but in order for the government to do this or that, they need to lay out a legal basis for doing so...this report lays out a legal framework for wiretapping potential rightwing extremists, whether individuals or groups.

[Obama’s choice to make public the documents from the previous administration and how we handled enhanced interrogation and upon whom we used it and how far we would go was such a rookie move. We do not want our enemies to know what we will do or that we have limits as to how far we will go. Unfortunately, despite the contents, far-leftists will look at this and decide, these documents mean that we torture. What is even more hypocritical is, man Democrats and Republicans on the hill knew exactly what we did; but this was classified information, and so we kept it quiet—even Democrats did, except to score political points. What sad is, Obama shows that he is willing to give up measures which have kept us safe in order to gain political points.]

The Obama administration has declassified and released opinions of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) given in 2005 and earlier that analyze the legality of interrogation techniques authorized for use by the CIA. Those techniques were applied only when expressly permitted by the director, and are described in these opinions in detail, along with their limits and the safeguards applied to them.

The release of these opinions was unnecessary as a legal matter, and is unsound as a matter of policy. Its effect will be to invite the kind of institutional timidity and fear of recrimination that weakened intelligence gathering in the past, and that we came sorely to regret on Sept. 11, 2001.

Proponents of the release have argued that the techniques have been abandoned and thus there is no point in keeping them secret any longer; that they were in any event ineffective; that their disclosure was somehow legally compelled; and that they cost us more in the coin of world opinion than they were worth. None of these claims survives scrutiny.

Soon after he was sworn in, President Barack Obama signed an executive order that suspended use of these techniques and confined not only the military but all U.S. agencies -- including the CIA -- to the interrogation limits set in the Army Field Manual. This suspension was accompanied by a commitment to further study the interrogation program, and government personnel were cautioned that they could no longer rely on earlier opinions of the OLC.

Although evidence shows that the Army Field Manual, which is available online, is already used by al Qaeda for training purposes, it was certainly the president's right to suspend use of any technique. However, public disclosure of the OLC opinions, and thus of the techniques themselves, assures that terrorists are now aware of the absolute limit of what the U.S. government could do to extract information from them, and can supplement their training accordingly and thus diminish the effectiveness of these techniques as they have the ones in the Army Field Manual.

Moreover, disclosure of the details of the program pre-empts the study of the president's task force and assures that the suspension imposed by the president's executive order is effectively permanent. There would be little point in the president authorizing measures whose nature and precise limits have already been disclosed in detail to those whose resolve we hope to overcome. This conflicts with the sworn promise of the current director of the CIA, Leon Panetta, who testified in aid of securing Senate confirmation that if he thought he needed additional authority to conduct interrogation to get necessary information, he would seek it from the president. By allowing this disclosure, President Obama has tied not only his own hands but also the hands of any future administration faced with the prospect of attack.

Disclosure of the techniques is likely to be met by faux outrage, and is perfectly packaged for media consumption. It will also incur the utter contempt of our enemies. Somehow, it seems unlikely that the people who beheaded Nicholas Berg and Daniel Pearl, and have tortured and slain other American captives, are likely to be shamed into giving up violence by the news that the U.S. will no longer interrupt the sleep cycle of captured terrorists even to help elicit intelligence that could save the lives of its citizens.

Which brings us to the next of the justifications for disclosing and thus abandoning these measures: that they don't work anyway, and that those who are subjected to them will simply make up information in order to end their ordeal. This ignorant view of how interrogations are conducted is belied by both experience and common sense. If coercive interrogation had been administered to obtain confessions, one might understand the argument. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), who organized the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, among others, and who has boasted of having beheaded Daniel Pearl, could eventually have felt pressed to provide a false confession. But confessions aren't the point. Intelligence is. Interrogation is conducted by using such obvious approaches as asking questions whose correct answers are already known and only when truthful information is provided proceeding to what may not be known. Moreover, intelligence can be verified, correlated and used to get information from other detainees, and has been; none of this information is used in isolation.

The terrorist Abu Zubaydah (sometimes derided as a low-level operative of questionable reliability, but who was in fact close to KSM and other senior al Qaeda leaders) disclosed some information voluntarily. But he was coerced into disclosing information that led to the capture of Ramzi bin al Shibh, another of the planners of Sept. 11, who in turn disclosed information which -- when combined with what was learned from Abu Zubaydah -- helped lead to the capture of KSM and other senior terrorists, and the disruption of follow-on plots aimed at both Europe and the U.S. Details of these successes, and the methods used to obtain them, were disclosed repeatedly in more than 30 congressional briefings and hearings beginning in 2002, and open to all members of the Intelligence Committees of both Houses of Congress beginning in September 2006. Any protestation of ignorance of those details, particularly by members of those committees, is pretense.

The techniques themselves were used selectively against only a small number of hard-core prisoners who successfully resisted other forms of interrogation, and then only with the explicit authorization of the director of the CIA. Of the thousands of unlawful combatants captured by the U.S., fewer than 100 were detained and questioned in the CIA program. Of those, fewer than one-third were subjected to any of the techniques discussed in these opinions. As already disclosed by Director Hayden, as late as 2006, even with the growing success of other intelligence tools, fully half of the government's knowledge about the structure and activities of al Qaeda came from those interrogations.

Nor was there any legal reason compelling such disclosure. To be sure, the American Civil Liberties Union has sued under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain copies of these and other memoranda, but the government until now has successfully resisted such lawsuits. Even when the government disclosed that three members of al Qaeda had been subjected to waterboarding but that the technique was no longer part of the CIA interrogation program, the court sustained the government's argument that the precise details of how it was done, including limits and safeguards, could remain classified against the possibility that some future president may authorize its use. Therefore, notwithstanding the suggestion that disclosure was somehow legally compelled, there was no legal impediment to the Justice Department making the same argument even with respect to any techniques that remained in the CIA program until last January.

There is something of the self-fulfilling prophecy in the claim that our interrogation of some unlawful combatants beyond the limits set in the Army Field Manual has disgraced us before the world. Such a claim often conflates interrogation with the sadism engaged in by some soldiers at Abu Ghraib, an incident that had nothing whatever to do with intelligence gathering. The limits of the Army Field Manual are entirely appropriate for young soldiers, for the conditions in which they operate, for the detainees they routinely question, and for the kinds of tactically relevant information they pursue. Those limits are not appropriate, however, for more experienced people in controlled circumstances with high-value detainees. Indeed, the Army Field Manual was created with awareness that there was an alternative protocol for high-value detainees.

In addition, there were those who believed that the U.S. deserved what it got on Sept. 11, 2001. Such people, and many who purport to speak for world opinion, were resourceful both before and after the Sept. 11 attacks in crafting reasons to resent America's role as a superpower. Recall also that the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, the attacks on our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the punctiliously correct trials of defendants in connection with those incidents, and the bombing of the USS Cole took place long before the advent of CIA interrogations, the invasion of Saddam Hussein's Iraq, or the many other purported grievances asserted over the past eight years.

The effect of this disclosure on the morale and effectiveness of many in the intelligence community is not hard to predict. Those charged with the responsibility of gathering potentially lifesaving information from unwilling captives are now told essentially that any legal opinion they get as to the lawfulness of their activity is only as durable as political fashion permits. Even with a seemingly binding opinion in hand, which future CIA operations personnel would take the risk? There would be no wink, no nod, no handshake that would convince them that legal guidance is durable. Any president who wants to apply such techniques without such a binding and durable legal opinion had better be prepared to apply them himself.

Beyond that, anyone in government who seeks an opinion from the OLC as to the propriety of any action, or who authors an opinion for the OLC, is on notice henceforth that such a request for advice, and the advice itself, is now more likely than before to be subject after the fact to public and partisan criticism. It is hard to see how that will promote candor either from those who should be encouraged to ask for advice before they act, or from those who must give it.

In his book "The Terror Presidency," Jack Goldsmith describes the phenomenon we are now experiencing, and its inevitable effect, referring to what he calls "cycles of timidity and aggression" that have weakened intelligence gathering in the past. Politicians pressure the intelligence community to push to the legal limit, and then cast accusations when aggressiveness goes out of style, thereby encouraging risk aversion, and then, as occurred in the wake of 9/11, criticizing the intelligence community for feckless timidity. He calls these cycles "a terrible problem for our national security." Indeed they are, and the precipitous release of these OLC opinions simply makes the problem worse.

Myth No. 1: Employer Mandates Would Make Coverage Affordable. Requiring employers to either offer employees health insurance or pay a percentage of wages in fines would encourage more coverage, and thus reduce the number of uninsured.

Reality: Workers bear the full cost of their health coverage, either directly through contributions or indirectly through lower wages. Thus, an employer mandate really means that workers must receive a portion of wages in health benefits. Furthermore, if employers are forced to provide coverage that workers do not value as much as wages, the mandate has the effect of a tax on labor, discouraging employment and raising production costs.

Myth No. 2: Insurance Costs Can Be Limited to 10 Percent of Income. Families should not be required to contribute more than 10 percent of their income toward their health coverage or out-of-pocket medical costs (5 percent for low-income families).

Reality: What individuals do not pay in the marketplace must be covered by government. In other words, taxes would substitute for out-of-pocket premiums. Americans currently spend about 17 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), or nearly 20 percent of personal income, on medical care. Limiting out-of-pocket health care spending to 10 percent of income would not reduce costs. Instead it would disguise the true cost of medical care to consumers. Since a lavish policy would cost no more than a frugal one, families would have an incentive to over-insure and over-spend at taxpayers' expense. Moreover, even if subsidies reduced the cost of coverage for a year or two, premiums would soon begin to grow again. Currently, health spending is rising at twice the rate of workers' income, and would continue to do so. Subsidies would increase and, eventually, health care would be rationed to control costs.

Myth No. 3: Guaranteed Issue and Community Rating of Premiums Protect Consumers. Insurers should not be allowed to base premiums for individual health insurance policies on expected health care costs. All sectors of the community should share costs through even premiums (community-rating), whether young, old, sick or healthy. Insurers should not be allowed to refuse coverage to people who have serious medical conditions (guaranteed issue).

Reality: Regulations like guaranteed issue and community rating penalize the vast majority of consumers for the benefit of a small number of people. Although everyone pays a similar premium, healthy people pay more than they would otherwise so that sick people can be charged less. Thus, premiums rise for the majority of people. In every state with guaranteed issue and community rating, the cost of coverage is far higher than in states that do not have these regulations. New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts are good examples; a 2007 survey by America's Health Insurance Plans found that [see the figure]:

* An individual could purchase a policy for $2,537 a year in Kentucky but would pay about $5,326 in New Jersey.

* A similar policy, available for about $2,363 in Kansas, costs $4,734 in New York.

* A policy priced at $2,202 in Iowa costs $2,015 in Washington and $8,537 in Massachusetts.

Costly mandates make insurance a poor value for everyone except those with serious health conditions, and many people will wait until they become sick to buy coverage - just the opposite of the effect universal coverage advocates want!

Myth No. 4: Expanding Government Insurance Improves Access to Care. Expanding eligibility for Medicaid or the State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP) would improve access to care for lower-middle income families.

Reality: In practice, things are different. On paper, Medicaid coverage appears more generous than the benefits the vast majority of Americans receive through private health insurance. Potentially, Medicaid enrollees can see any doctor or enter any facility and pay nothing. In fact, the uninsured and Medicaid patients do tend to get their care at the same hospitals, clinics and emergency rooms. But the availability of other providers is limited: Nationally, one-third of doctors do not accept any Medicaid patients and, among those who do, many limit the number they will treat. Studies have shown that access to care at ambulatory (outpatient) clinics is also limited for Medicaid patients, as is access to specialist care.

Another problem is that expanding public coverage encourages people to drop their private health plan to take advantage of the free program - leading to a phenomenon known as "crowd-out." For instance:

* For every new dollar of spending on Medicaid expansions in the 1990s, between 49 and 74 cents went to people who had dropped private coverage.

* Hawaii recently abandoned its universal child health care program after state officials discovered 85 percent of newly enrolled kids had dropped private coverage.

As income rises, so does the likelihood that families will be covered by private insurance. Thus, increasing eligibility for public coverage also increases the likelihood that a family will drop better quality private coverage.

Conclusion. Most health reform proposals designed to achieve universal coverage by making health insurance more affordable are based on myths about how health insurance should work. They would impose regulations that would increase the cost of coverage for most people and boost expenditures. As a result, consumers would have fewer choices and less control over their health care.

Meanwhile, back in the Minnesota Senate recount, the three-judge panel reviewing the race has declared Democrat Al Franken the winner. Republican Norm Coleman intends to appeal to the state's Supreme Court, while Democrats and the press corps pressure him to surrender. We hope Mr. Coleman keeps fighting, because the outcome so far hangs on the fact that some votes have been counted differently from others.

Even after the recount and panel-findings, the 312-vote margin separating the two men equals about .01% of the 2.9 million votes cast. Even without any irregularities, this is as close to a "tie" as it gets. And there have been plenty of irregularities. By the end of the recount, the state was awash with evidence of duplicate ballot counting, newly discovered ballots, missing ballots, illegal voting, and wildly diverse standards as to which votes were counted. Any one of these issues was enough to throw the outcome into doubt. Combined, they created a taint more worthy of New Jersey than Minnesota.

The Coleman camp pushed for resolution of these problems during the recount, but it was stymied by a state canvassing board that cared more about preserving its "Minnesota nice" reputation than about making tough calls. The state Supreme Court also punted difficult questions. The mess then landed with the three-judge panel overseeing Mr. Coleman's contest trial, a panel that seemed out of its depth.

Case in point: the panel's dismal handling of absentee ballots. Early in the recount, the Franken team howled that some absentee votes had been erroneously rejected by local officials. We warned at the time that this was dangerous territory, designed to pressure election officials into accepting rejected ballots after the fact.

Yet instead of shutting this Franken request down, or early on issuing a clear set of rules as to which absentees were valid, the state Supreme Court and the canvassing board oversaw a haphazard process by which some counties submitted new batches to be included in the tally, while other counties did not. The resulting additional 933 ballots were largely responsible for Mr. Franken's narrow lead.

During the contest trial, the Coleman team presented evidence of a further 6,500 absentees that it felt deserved to be included under the process that had produced the prior 933. The three judges then finally defined what constituted a "legal" absentee ballot. Countable ballots, for instance, had to contain the signature of the voter, complete registration information, and proper witness credentials.

But the panel only applied these standards going forward, severely reducing the universe of additional absentees that the Coleman team could hope to have included. In the end, the three judges allowed only about 350 additional absentees to be counted. The panel also did nothing about the hundreds, possibly thousands, of absentees that have already been legally included, yet are now "illegal" according to the panel's own ex-post definition.

If all this sounds familiar, think Florida 2000. In that Presidential recount, officials couldn't decide what counted as a legal vote, and so different counties used different standards. The Florida Supreme Court made things worse by changing the rules after the fact. In Bush v. Gore, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that this violated Constitutional principles of equal protection and due process, which require that every vote be accorded equal weight.

This will be a basis for Mr. Coleman's appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court. Should that body be reluctant to publicly rebuke their judicial colleagues who sat on the contest panel, Mr. Coleman could also take his appeal to federal court. This could take months.

Another solution is to hold a special Senate election. Minnesota law does not specifically provide for such a runoff. However, the U.S. Constitution's 17th amendment does provide states with a roadmap for filling "vacancies," which might be a legal starting point for a do-over. Even before the shifting standards of the contest trial, the St. Paul Pioneer Press looked at the ballot-counting evidence and called for a revote. It could be that this is where the court case is leading in any event.

Democrats want to portray Mr. Coleman as a sore loser and make the Republican worry that he will ruin his chances for other political office. But Mr. Coleman has a legitimate grievance that not all votes have been treated equally. If the Franken standard of disparate absentee-voter treatment is allowed to stand, every close election will be settled by a legal scramble to change the vote-counting rules after Election Day. Minnesota should take the time to get this one right.

Nearly 100 days into Barack Obama's presidency and he is still a rock star in Europe, as evidenced by the large crowds that turned out to cheer him at the recent G-20 summit in London and NATO summit in Strasbourg, France.

George W. Bush was heartily disliked in Europe west of Warsaw, and Mr. Obama is universally loved. But how well does that popularity translate into power? How far could President Obama push his agenda with, say, German Chancellor Angela Merkel or French President Nicolas Sarkozy? About as far as you can throw a piano.

At the G-20 summit in London, Frau Merkel politely said nein to Mr. Obama's entreaties about adding billions to the German economic stimulus pot. (Actually, it was a sheer pleasure to watch the Europeans, who have never seen a government expenditure they didn't like, celebrate fiscal discipline in the face of U.S. profligacy).

Afghanistan? Mr. Obama asked his European allies to contribute more troops and put them where the fighting is -- mainly in the embattled south. This is where the Anglo powers bear the brunt of warfare while the French, Germans and Italians remain happily ensconced in the quieter north. Though Mr. Obama says he received "strong and unanimous support" on Afghanistan from his NATO partners in Strasbourg, he got no additional troop commitments. The Europeans are happy to see the U.S. president add another 19,000 American troops to the 38,000 already there. Why worry, if Mr. Big is willing to carry the load?

How about being nice to former rogue-staters like Kim Jong Il? North Korea has just kicked out the inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency and vowed to fire up its Yongbyon reactor and resume its nuclear weapons program, which may already have produced several (no one really knows how many) bombs. That, of course, was preceded by the spectacular April 5 launch of an intercontinental missile, which, though it fizzled, was intended to demonstrate North Korea's growing capacity to deliver a warhead as far away as California.

Mr. Obama has gone out of his way to schmooze with the Iranian mullahs of "Axis of Evil" infamy. In his speeches, he has flattered and fawned over Tehran. He has followed the Europeans in throwing a huge carrot to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: It's okay to go on enriching uranium while we talk. (George W. Bush always insisted on stopping enrichment as the price of bilateral talks.)

The result was predictable. Earlier this week, a journalist with dual American-Iranian citizenship was put on trial for espionage. This is what totalitarians love to do when facing a suddenly seductive enemy. They respond with deliberate provocation to signal "no deal" or "we want a much higher price."

How about climate policy? The Bush administration was Beelzebub incarnate. And so, at the beginning of the U.N. climate talks in Bonn, Todd Stern, Mr. Obama's chief climate negotiator, received a "round of rowdy applause," as the New York Times put it. By the time the Bonn gathering ended last week, however, it was all gripes and groans. During his campaign, Mr. Obama had wowed greens with his pledge to take CO2 emissions to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050 -- an impossible goal. Now, American officials are telling their friends abroad that they can't come up with concrete steps because they need more time to prepare public opinion at home.

The Bushies could have said that, and they certainly said what Mr. Obama's emissaries are telling the world now: that rapid-growth countries like China and India ought to curb CO2 emissions as well. Those who remember the mano-a-mano over the Kyoto Protocol will recall that Mr. Bush's "China, too" policy was one casus belli between Europe and the U.S.

What Jonathan Pershing, Mr. Obama's No. 2 special envoy for climate change, said in Bonn sounded like pure Bush-speak: "U.S. policy is something we are developing at home, according to what we see as the science and political capacity." In translation: The U.S. will follow national interest as well as the electoral mood, and it won't be bullied by the apocalypse mongers of this world.

This litany will lengthen in months to come, but it's not too early to render a preliminary judgment on Team Obama's foreign policy. The basic lesson, alas, is that nice guys don't do better than meanies like Mr. Bush.

That is not how politics among nations works. The last president who excited so much enthusiasm was John F. Kennedy. Jackie did wow the French with her bow to Continental tastes, but Jack found an implacable rival in President Charles de Gaulle. Reaching out to Nikita Khrushchev in his first year, JFK went to the brink of nuclear war in his second with the Cuban missile crisis.

The point here is an old one, variously ascribed to Talleyrand, Palmerston or De Gaulle, about nations having everlasting interests rather than eternal friends or enemies. In today's language: interest beats affection any time. Mrs. Merkel surely knows how enthralled her country is with Mr. Obama. But that's not enough to place German soldiers in harm's way in Afghanistan, or to run up the national debt in a country that is traumatized by inflation.

Why should Kim Jong Il part with his nuclear weapons program when it's the only sure-fire way for an unhinged but smart dictator to get great powers to give him all sorts of goodies? Let go of the nukes, and Pyongyang will be nothing but the capital of Asia's most cruelly backward country.

Why should Iran roll over just because the U.S. seeks to flatter and cajole? The jihadis in Tehran don't want a nuclear bomb or use surrogates like Hamas and Hezbollah because they dislike the United States. They want hegemony over the Greater Middle East, and guess who stands in their way? Uncle Sam and Israel.

Can Mr. Obama sweet talk the European Union into more modest climate goals? No, because the Europeans believe that the U.S. is taking too much from the global commons (energy) and putting too much bad stuff into it (greenhouse gases).

"We will listen carefully," Mr. Obama said with a view to Tehran, "we will bridge misunderstandings, and we will seek common ground." Some 500 years ago, Francis I of France was asked what misunderstandings had fueled his constant wars with the Habsburg Empire's Charles V. He replied: "None, we are in complete agreement. We both want control over Italy."

Conflict between states is made from sterner stuff than bad manners or bad vibes, past grievances or imaginary fears. International politics is neither psychiatry nor a set of "see me, feel me" encounter sessions. It is about power and position, about preventing injury and protecting interests. Love and friendship move people, not nations.

Did you hear about the White House document about right-wing extremists which classifies people who are strong conservatives as radicals who might start a revolution or commit acts of terrorism?

I apologize; I was a little slow on the uptake here; although I mentioned the tea parties and gave a few links on them, here is two of the better sites for locations (most of these tea parties occurred on April 15^th, but many occurred prior and no telling what is going to happen in the near future):

Obama gives his meaningless economic speech at Georgetown University, and there are Greek letters which spell the name of Jesus at the front of Gaston Hall. What the White House required was for this to be covered up before Obama would speak. Shame on Georgetown for acquiescing.

One of my favorite commentators, pundits and columnists is Charles Krauthammer. He is often featured as one of the Fox All Stars during the last 20 minutes of Fox’s Special Report, and he is always insightful and always right. Even this past week, Rush Limbaugh said, “If I did not have my brain, then I would want the brain of Charles Krauthammer.” This is Krauthammer’s most recent column on what Obama achieved overseas on his apology tour:

Great winter storm in Colorado in early April; 12–36 inches of snow throughout the state’s mountains:

Here are a couple of maps which indicate the unemployment figures. You will note that in states where there have been liberal policies, liberal governors and congresses, and/or strong union control, unemployment is high. In states where there is little by way of unionization and generally under the control of conservatives, unemployment is low. The first gives the general unemployment and the second gives the rate of increase (decrease):

It is not a difficult concept; the more state jobs there are, the more unemployment there is; the more a state favors business, the lower the unemployment. If a union is strong in a state (which results in people being paid an increasing amount of money for a static amount of work; or is paid a lot of money not to work), such a state is going to be in worse shape. Private enterprise, when unhampered by unions, just does a lot better than heavily unionized industries or government employment. This does not require an Einstein to figure this out. It is more likely that a multi-millionaire or billionaire is going to expand his business or businesses, doing this in accordance with the market, and then do more hiring at the same time. Trying to build an economy from the bottom up does not work; or from government down.

In 1996, the state Department of Ecology officially declared Burnt Bridge Creek to be severely polluted with fecal coliform. They since figured out that the pollution was coming from the pipes from their own building. And you want government to run our health care system? It took them13 years after they identified this problem to figure out its source. Yea, government.

Okay, these are the most left-wing leaders of South and Central America, and here are some of the things which they have said; will Obama give in to their observations/complaints/demands?

I realized that I occasionally make a comment or a remark which might be seen as my attempt to be provocative. I do have sources.

It is difficult to find, ladies and gentlemen, in American history, a time when so many liberals have spent so much time slinging so much mud on an embryonic movement. They are petrified and scared to death of the 500 tea parties scheduled for today in 50 American states. They're out there snarling, "It was created by Fox News; it's a right-wing plot; this is all Limbaugh's doing; it's white people who are afraid of Obama," and that nutty professor from Princeton, Paul Krugman. It's backed by right-wing billionaires. Oh, even though that's BS, I guess it's okay if a movement is funded by George Soros; it's okay if MoveOn.org is behind it. But what if it's a grassroots bubble-up movement started entirely by average, ordinary, everyday Americans, then somehow it poses a great threat, and it's something that must be discredited; it's something that must be rained on; it's something that must be destroyed or at least interrupted and tampered with.

So the liberals, who love the common man, the liberals, the American left, tell us daily, weekly, monthly, they are the ones looking out for the little guy, they now have to use every weapon at their command, from NBC, to the New York Times, to the Obama database, to the Twitter crowd, to mock, smear, and trash what is real democracy. What is real democracy is occurring in 50 states, in 500 different locations, and the American left, standing for the little guy, protecting the little guy from the onslaught of disaster. They have to go out and destroy these people, to mock them, to smear them, to trash them, because it is real democracy, it is the expression of individual liberty and freedom and the clamor for more, which is upsetting to no end to Barack Obama, the Democrat Party, and the American left. You want to do a Million Man March, no problem. You want to have a MoveOn protest or Code Pink panties showing up at any congressional hearing room, no problem, ditto. You want Cindy Sheehan and her two dozen protesters outside Bush's house. No problem. That's democracy at work. You want the Democrat Party urging defeat for the US military, echoed by the Drive-By Media, that's fine, that's democracy at work.

But real people getting together because of real issues that frighten them and alarm them about the security that they feel they're not going to have in the future and the very structure of their country, let that happen, oh, no, that is not to be tolerated. That is to be destroyed. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the new era of hope and change, a new era of genuine hope, of genuine change, not backed by MoveOn, not funded by George Soros, not supported by Al Sharpton's busloads. These tea parties today are springing up all over the country and various people are being blamed. The Heritage Foundation has a report today that Dick Armey is being blamed by the Center for American Progress for this. Paul Krugman is blaming me and Tom DeLay for this. Blaming, blaming. Liberal pundits, liberal special interest organizations blaming various people for the outpouring of genuine sentiment that is born of love of country and devotion to the nation's founding. The truth is, these tea parties are a completely grassroots movement. There is no specific leader or origin. I mean, you might be able to say that Rick Santelli of CNBC on February 16th talking about a tea party led to this, and you might want to say that somebody in the media, or there are politicians trying to claim credit for it, which is standard operating procedure. Some media people are trying to claim credit for it, that's standard operating procedure as well.

RUSH: There were 800 tea parties, and I think some outfit has calculated based on the estimates from law enforcement officials and others on all the sites, something like 189,000 Americans showed up yesterday total for all the tea parties. Now, do you remember, folks, when inspiring new people to the political process was a grand and glorious thing? In fact, that's what we were told the Obama campaign was all about. President Obama was hailed as a candidate, because people who had never cared about politics before were now interested. They wanted to unify the country; they wanted to all get along. They were becoming politically active. It was a sign of a healthy body politic, and of course it was wonderful because it was a Democrat president doing it, and it was double wonderful because it was an African-American candidate doing it.

All this fits so many templates of the Drive-By Media and the American left. Obama was to be praised and admired for getting people involved in politics. Now, the dirty little secret is that these young people showing up to Obama campaigns were not interested in politics. They had no idea what he was talking about. It didn't matter what he said. They were caught up in a cult of personality, a personality built on quicksand, a phony rock, you might say. Barack Obama is the man who sat in Jeremiah Wright's church for 20 years. He's not the man who claimed to reject it. Now, these people at the tea parties, they're not caught up in personalities 'cause this had nothing to do with personalities yesterday. There were some personalities that tried to get in there and make it about them, and I'll tell you, there are a couple downsides to what happened yesterday, minor, but I'm going to address those as the program unfolds before your very eyes and ears. The people yesterday at the tea parties were not caught up in personalities. They were there because of issues, and there were young people there, and there were people from all walks of life, and they are terribly concerned about what they see going on in their country. This was the result yesterday of tremendous substance, nothing personality oriented, nothing cult-like.

This was new people being brought into the political process. But since it wasn't anything to do positively with Obama, it had to be impugned. The people had to be mischaracterized and criticized, and their reputations destroyed and so forth, their very identities. As far as the media is concerned, the Democrat Party, since they're not caught up in personality, since they're not part of a cult, since they're not out there bowing down to Obama, they're extremists, in the eyes of Janet Napolitano and others at the Department of Homeland Security. They're caught up in adult issues. These people at the tea parties were caught up in adult issues, like irresponsible spending, self-defeating bailouts, higher taxes that are going to follow all of this.

See, when Barack Obama was the centerpiece of adulation, that was good for politics, we were told. It was good for the country, good for the world. By the way, we were told also that Obama was going to renew respect for America around the world. It hasn't happened with Sarkozy. Sarkozy is still talking. Now he's making jokes about Obama walking on water. Oh, yes. I have the details coming up. So when Obama's policies are the centerpiece, then the people that showed up at the tea parties have to be monitored by Homeland Security, people who have never been politically active showed up at tea parties yesterday. People who have never attended -- I got tons of e-mails, "This is my first rally, Rush, my first protest, Rush." There are a lot of people who had never attended a political rally in their lives and are now involved because of the tea parties yesterday. Now a few months ago we were told that was the surest sign that the United States was, for the first time, a country we could be proud of. But today, and yesterday, it was something to fear.

Now, there are two aspects to this. We've got lots of sound bites coming up. But there are two aspects to this that I do want to share with you. My greatest concern about this is that there are -- I don't want to impugn anybody here -- but there's a possibility that this is going to lead to a third-party movement, and that's death. Third-party candidates succeed in one thing, and that is electing their alternatives. John Anderson, 1980, you had Perot in 1992. The temptation here is to go third party 'cause the Republican Party is not responsive. The real question, in my humble opinion, is that this effort and energy needs to be used, as Ronald Reagan did, to take over the Republican Party, to repopulate it and that's exactly what Reagan did, he took it away from the Rockefeller blue-blood country club types starting in 1976, took him 'til 1980 to do it. Goldwater did the same thing. Both Reagan and Goldwater could have gone third party, and there's a temptation here to go third-party, and a lot of people advocating third-party are the personalities that are trying to make this all about them, and that troubles me 'cause this is not about personalities, it's not about any politician, and it isn't about any media person that organized all of this.

Ron Paul is out there trying to take credit for it, by the way. He issued a big press release, but this is grassroots, this is why this kind of energy from the grassroots needs to be harnessed into the existing political apparatus that can actually win if it is built and structured right. That's the Republican Party. Third party can't win. Third party is not going to have any congressional candidates. I just think that the effort here to make this third party -- which is bubbling under the surface, it's not something you hear outright, but it's something I sense that is taking place. I also just want to share this with you. This really is not going to be a surprise to you, and I don't know how widespread that it is, but I have a friend who lives near Kansas City, who went to a tea party in Kansas City. He's got a couple kids in college and he sends me a note today saying that his daughter made an interesting point about the coverage of the tea parties, which, this is not going to surprise anybody, but this is an on-site reaction. My friend's daughter said that watching the television coverage was to watch stereotypes of right-wing groups. The stereotypes were what ended up being highlighted. The pictures showed some pro-gun signs with anti-tax signs, country bands were shown playing, the media made sure to get a bunch of fired up angry white guys, young people generally shown were below the age of five. This is her recollection.

This is not me speaking. This is my friend's daughter, college age. As though these young children were being forced to do something they wouldn't do if they were teenagers. Now, did you see that? This is just one potential recruit, open-minded watching this stuff. She commented that young people watching this are going to be pushed away, and that depressed her. She understands the message of the events. She concluded the message was lost in the coverage of the event. Who was there was more important than why was there, in her opinion. That's exactly what the media wanted to accomplish. The who was there and who were they and who are they rather than the why. Even though they took some shots at the why itself -- and this feeds right into the DHS report. But my friend tells me that his daughter is not aware of that. But you've got the DHS report out there defining pro-life, anti-gun control, as right-wing extremist. So hello, Susan Roesgen at CNN and all these other just shameless, irresponsible agenda oriented media people who catered right to that. So once again, we have a disconnect, and I have experience with this. By the way, folks, my most recent example, the CPAC speech, went on an hour-and-a-half. There was one line from it that was replayed over and over and over, about wanting Obama to fail.

All of the stuff that really had the crowd cheering and clapping and inspired was left out and ignored. This is just what happens to people when they're in the mainstream media, when the mainstream media is reporting on them. So I mention this only to say to those of you that were there who are watching the media coverage and maybe a little bit disappointed, don't know how many of you are, but I do know that a lot of people still make the mistake of measuring our success against how honestly and positively actions we take are reported on the mainstream media. That's never going to happen. So my admonition to you is ignore the coverage and do not let it affect how you are going to be involved and what you're going to think. This coverage is designed not only to dispirit you, but anybody else who watched it. It was disingenuous; it was dishonest; it was an embarrassment. I watched the Drive-By Media, I'm 58 years old, and I watched the Drive-By Media, and for the first time I said, "I'm really not recognizing my country here. I don't recognize the country they talk about. I don't recognize the country they support." It's got me scared.

I've been frightened about this Obama stuff for a long time, but it's clearly us versus them. It really is. It's us versus them. I have decided there might be exceptions to this, because there always are, but I've decided it makes, and will make, no sense for me to ever agree to be interviewed by anybody in the mainstream media, especially if they're going to tape it and edit it themselves and air it later. What's the point? I don't need 'em. We know that it's not going to be fair. We know that it's going to be altered and misreported and so forth. It really is, it's an us versus them, and "them" now includes the media, without question, without any doubt about this whatsoever. So the media covers this stuff yesterday and of course it's much easier for them to cover the who than the why, especially when they can create the false notion of a prejudice, bias on the part of the participants. Pictures speak to groups and stereotypes. I, for example, speak to individuals, and the reason this program is as effective as it is, is largely due to you listening to the program and admitting it.

But radio is great because you can create your own pictures. The pictures aren't provided, so you're not distracted by a false picture. I'm able to zero in and speak to you with words, with one voice. On television, you see groups that can be maligned, mischaracterized, as they were yesterday. So I'm not saying don't do it again, and I don't think anybody can stop it. I think there's going to be more of them. I'm hearing talk that July 4th is going to see a rebirth of these things. Keep on, folks, don't misunderstand. I just want to be honest here and share with you some of the perceptions that people who were not emotionally involved in this thing or politically involved in this thing had when watching it. Some of them; not all of them. Most of the bastard coverage was CNN and MSNBC.

RUSH: Paul in Albuquerque, New Mexico, you're up first today, sir. It's great to have you here.

CALLER: Rush! Over-10,000-tea-partiers-in-attendance dittos from Albuquerque, New Mexico.

CALLER: It is an honor to talk to you. This is awesome. I called because as one of the organizers of the Albuquerque tea party, it's really burning me up to hear these reports that this was somehow --

CALLER: Yeah, well, and I'm kind of mad at you, too, because I haven't received my check from you or Fox yet. I'm wondering where that was. You were supposed to call and bolster me on all day yesterday. What happened there? But yeah, this was... We had, I want to say, about seven or eight people in our core group. This couldn't have been a more grassroots thing. This couldn't have been a more all volunteer function. Yeah, we had sponsorships, we had local businesses come out of the woodwork -- mine included; that's how I originally got involved -- to help get this thing off and help get it going.

RUSH: Yeah. By the way, what the hell's wrong with that? What the hell is a local business getting involved with this, what's wrong with that? For crying out loud, General Electric's joined the damn global warming movement! You know, screw these people out there, Paul. Don't let them... You know they're going to lie about you. You know they're going to try to discredit what you do. When you put yourself out there like you did, you've got to expect what's gonna come back at you, and you've got to learn to ignore it, particularly when it isn't true. You can't let them make your focus change to convincing them.

You don't want to play this -- I'm not saying you are-- on their field. Just keep doing what you do and screw 'em! But what they want you to do is be all upset the way they report, they want you responding and pandering to them, they want you worried that they're misreporting it. Just be above 'em -- which is not hard, 'cause you are. You're smarter, you're more involved, you have a much more open mind, and you're clearly more informed than half the journalists at CNN combined. Journalists are not even informed anymore. They're just activists. They're just agenda drivers. They don't bother to inform themselves. Kim in Chicago, you're next on the Rush Limbaugh program. Hi.

CALLER: Rush, I just want to say: you are a true gift to the citizens of the United States. Thank you for your service.

CALLER: I want to say, I heard your comment earlier, someone standing out in the Drive-Bys saying, "Where are the African-Americans? Where were the African-Americans?" and I just want to say, my husband and I were in Chicago at the tea party yesterday, and if they would have been in Chicago they would have seen some. We were really encouraged to see a great mix of ages and ethnic groups. We saw Hispanic-Americans and African-Americans. There was a man on the street from Russia telling his concerns about what he's seen in his country and what's being paralleled here, and I think the only group that was missing was the media.

RUSH: (laughing) Well, the media has its templates, and the CNN babe shouting, "There's no African-Americans!"

RUSH: "There are no African-Americans 'cause conservatives are racists, and that's why African-Americans -- they're smart -- they don't show up at these things."

CALLER: Yeah. They were in Chicago, and I was encouraged to see, like I said, a mix of ethnic groups, a mix of ages -- and these people were angry, but this was a peaceful crowd, and it was an amazingly polite crowd. If people bumped into each other, they said, "Oh, excuse me. Sorry." We were talking to each other, and I have to say the thing I thought was the greatest is at the end of this rally the people that were organizing it asked us all to look down and if we saw any litter on the street, at our feet, would we please pick it up and dispose of it properly on our way out, and everybody did it. It was just great. I was proud to be a part of it, and I'm just really sick to see how they misrepresented this.

RUSH: These people are not as smart as you. Do not think that they're any smarter than you, just because they're on TV. They're not.

RUSH: These people are such narrow-minded, so narrow-minded in their focus. They show up. (sigh) They don't even have to see. They just know it's going to happen because you're you, and they're going to report that it happened whether it did or not.

CALLER: Well, I hope that the people that were there will be encouraged to come out, even more of us, the next time.

RUSH: All had a good time, and it was worthwhile, and it was worth the effort, and it had substantive meaning. You know, this was about substance. You guys are not following some personality cult out there. This is not about that. You were out there on your own. I think it was fabulous. I appreciate your phone call. Dorothy in Salem, Missouri, it's nice to have you on the EIB Network. Hi.

CALLER: I tell you what, I want to thank you, and, you know, you talk about God, you're a gift from God? You are. You are, you are, you are.

CALLER: You have the guts, the courage, and the boldness to stand up for what you believe in. I'm from Salem, Missouri, and we had a little gathering in our park. I didn't get to go because I was working yesterday, but I would like to have been there. I watched yesterday evening as much as I could of Glenn [Beck] and different ones, and I also saw the reporter. Disgusting. Absolutely disgusting. But I have to give the man that she was talking to that had a little child in his arms credit. He had manners, even though she was coming against him. He had enough manners to let her go on and just make a fool of herself, to be honest.

CALLER: Yes. And I admire Sarah Stillman and Jo Ann Emerson of Missouri. I admire those women very much. The rest of them as a whole -- to me, if I had anything to do with it -- we'd kick 'em out and we'd start anew.

RUSH: Well, you know, this is an interesting reaction that you are having. Remember, now, I don't know if you heard the first half hour of the program -- I'm going to say it again here, but I don't mean to be throwing cold water on things. But one of the things I sense is effervescing out there on these tea parties is turning this into a third party movement, and there are a lot of people that want that to happen 'cause they want to be in charge of it. They want to get the credit for leading it, creating or what have you, or they want to use it to create a niche identity for themselves. I'm not going to mention names because it's not the point. The point is that third parties lose.

A third-party candidate will end up electing the alternative. Perot elected Clinton, for example. What instead needs to be the focus is largely what happened in 1994, and that is: Just get rid of as many incumbents as you can, because that's the problem here. Incumbents in Congress, incumbents in the Senate, that's the big problem. And right now, aside from little boulders in the road to try to stop Obama, there aren't the votes in Congress to stop anything he's doing. There's no way to stop the Democrats on this, and there's no way to stop the media. That's why these tea parties yesterday are important because this is the first step. This is something that's going to pop up from neighborhoods, from the grassroots, and this is the kind of thing that leads to the election of enough new members of Congress in 2010 that can maybe perhaps have a difference.

Don't forget this, that a lot if not most of the stimulus package, the pork spending in the Porkulus bill doesn't really kick in 'til 2010 and after and if you get significant enough majorities -- and it's a long shot but -- you might be able to write legislation that cancels some of that spending, Obama would veto it, and it would depend on the majorities and if the Democrats have enough votes to override it. But these little movements that started yesterday were actually not little. There were 800 of them, 189,000 people is what I heard. So that's hundreds of thousands of Americans. The Democrats are trying to characterize this as something that it wasn't, but they're just frightened of it.

And I'll tell you, a lot of other people look at this and they're probably a little surprised, too, because the casual observer and someone that pays casual attention to politics probably buys the media notion that Obama is universally popular in this country, that he's just great. Everybody loves him, loves his policies, loves him, and this kind of stuff happens and people say, "What, what, what?" It's like the guy that called yesterday, the 19-year-old called yesterday from Texas, "Obama does such a good job. Why is everybody so upset?" which was a great opportunity for me to try to explain it. And the more people think and realize that there are a lot of people that are not on line with this, the better the opportunity to oppose it.

RUSH: Nathan in Dallas. I'm glad you waited, sir. You're next on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Thanks for taking my call. And I just want to say first of all I acknowledge you and I thank you for being a voice for so many that just really don't have one or they can't find their voice to stand up. So thank you. The point I wanted to get to, though, is the reason I think the liberals are so put back and so upset, defensive, about yesterday, I think it's because up until now, they've had the exclusive right to activism, and now nonliberals, whether it's, you know, so-called independents or conservatives, they're stepping up and they're finding a way to use what liberals have used for so long --

RUSH: You're right, but even with that there's a difference. A lot of liberal protests are rented, rent-a-mobs. Do you remember a couple, three years ago a million people came out to protest illegal immigration and so forth? That's all put together by the unions. The unions get hold of their members and say, "You will show up at X and X location." Nobody had to be cajoled or prodded, nobody had to be threatened to show up at these tea parties yesterday. There are so many substantive differences. The public protests, you're right, is the liberal province. They've owned it and they use it as a tool. And they pay people. That's why the name rent-a-mob exists. In fact, Nancy Pelosi, in her comments, said, "This is not a grassroots movement, this is an astroturf movement." Now, Steve Gilbert at Sweetness-Light.com informs me -- I didn't know this -- that the term astroturfing was invented to describe actions by none other than David Axelrod, who is essentially Barack Obama's teleprompter.

David Axelrod had a PR firm and he worked in the private sector. One of the things that Axelrod did was to create phony grassroots movements in order to pressure competitors of his clients or to push the concerns of his clients. Astroturfing pretty much, as Nancy Pelosi described it, is phony. Astroturf is the creation of the image that there's a big groundswell of grassroots movements when there isn't one behind it, sort of like a Wag the Dog kind of thing. Astroturfing, from what I understand, is the term described, or invented, to describe the practices of David Axelrod. So they're out there, Pelosi and the media, trying to diminish what happened and what you people did yesterday by calling it astroturfing, which means fake grassroots, phony grassroots, when, again, as is the case in so many things, when the Democrats start accusing you, when liberals start accusing you of something, the odds are they do it themselves and you don't.

CALLER: Hello, Rush. I want to, first off, say thank you, and prostrate myself at the feet of the master.

CALLER: (laughing) And I want to apologize for being one of those rich Republicans from Bucks County. But the real reason for my call --

RUSH: You don't really mean that, you said that with a laugh. You're not apologizing for being rich.

RUSH: And besides, you won't be for very much longer. So enjoy it while you can.

CALLER: Yeah, that's the real point. But what the media is trying to do is say, "Hey, this tea party was only how many hundred thousand, 180,000--"

CALLER: No. And that's one of the reasons for my call is because I was actually working, as I have to do, so the point is, not how many people showed up, but how many people agree and really back the same kind of sentiment like myself, and believe me, there's a lot --

CALLER: -- and this was only the first volley, the first shot over the bow. Because, let me tell you, you know better than I do what's going to happen. The taxes that will follow the cigarette tax, the liquor tax, the price going up for gasoline, socialized medicine, schooling, one thing after the other is going to break the camel's back. And you talk about sentiment bubbling up, pretty soon it's going to be like a volcano erupting, because it's going to pile on and pile on and pile on. And I believe all of these taxes, all of this money being taken from those who have is going to actually set a second wave of foreclosures on houses --

RUSH: Which is what Obama wants. I think Obama wants the largest welfare state he can get. I really do. I think this is about as much federal control as he can secure for himself and the Democrat Party. Now, Mike, I'm going to end your call right now because you're talking about the first shot over the bow. Don't forget, Department of Homeland Security is monitoring us now, and you've identified yourself as coming from Bucks County, and you've admitted that you are rich. I mean you couldn't make yourself a bigger target by having admitted all this on the program today. In addition to that, we have learned here that the National Security Agency does all the monitoring of phone calls and e-mails, has been collecting even more information than usual on domestic phone calls made by us, made by Americans.

So I'm going to try to protect you from any more risk that you put yourself under by being so open about this. If you're right, if Mike is right, if there are going to be more of these -- and I've heard that they're going to try to gin these things up again on July 4th -- if that happens, I have a funny little suggestion for you, because you know the media will show up again, the Susan Roesgens of CNN and all the rest will show up. When they show up to start asking you questions as Susan Roesgen did with a guy holding a baby in Chicago yesterday, here's what you need to do. Promise me you'll do this. If you want to answer the questions, that's fine, if you want to try. But what you need to do first is say, "Where are the journalists? I don't see any journalists."

If there's somebody from CNN, with a camera and a microphone in your face, and they ask you some stupid questions, "Where are the journalists?" You know, and look around like you're trying to find them, "Where are the journalists? I don't see any journalists here." Oh-ho. That will be fun. Nobody will ever see it on TV. They will edit it out, but you could have a friend of yours videotape it and post it on YouTube, like those two idiots at Domino's.

CALLER: I'm an 82-year-old, World War II Navy vet, and I'm glad to be part of the shot across the bow.

CALLER: It's the first protest I've ever attended in Ashland, Ohio. About 500 gathered there. It's a small farm community, and a young lady Marine read your, I think grandfather's, article on the Framers of the Constitution.

RUSH: Somebody at the tea party read my dad's speech? It's on my website. She read my dad's speech on the signers of the declaration at the tea party?

CALLER: Yes. Yes. And you could have heard a pin drop. It was a very, very respectful crowd, and when she finished, there was cheering for quite a while.

RUSH: Wow. That is cool. You've made my day out there, Bill. I tell what we're going to do. Koko, I want you to -- 'cause that's in our archives. That's in the stack, the Essential Stack of Stuff at RushLimbaugh.com. Put the link to that speech, the text of it on the free side of the website tonight so people can read it. Put it up as soon as you can put it up there, in fact. Put it up at RushLimbaugh.com as soon as you can, signers of the Declaration of Independence. This will bring you to tears.

RUSH: Dan in Portland, Oregon, you're next. Thank you for waiting, sir. You're on the EIB Network.

CALLER: Yes. This morning I picked up my boss, who is from Texas, and had to take him to the airport, and first thing he said was, "Boy, you got a lot of freaks in Portland." And I said, "Well, what do you mean?" He goes, "Well, last night there was a demonstration, and they had piercings where they shouldn't have piercings and the tattoos where they shouldn't have tattoos," and I said, "I've been down there several times and usually it's a gay rights demonstration, something like that," and he goes, "No, it was an anti-Obama, anti-tax demonstration," and, Rush, I'm here to tell you, I've lived here all my life, those were not conservatives. I just want to let you know that all the people demonstrating are not conservatives, I'll bet.

RUSH: All right, so that's your point, that there were some leftists that showed up?

RUSH: Okay, but here's the thing about that. You're just getting the story from your boss, who watched it on TV.

RUSH: Well, now, we know, we were told that a bunch of leftists were going to try to infiltrate these things to try to give them a bad look and so forth. I don't know that that would qualify, but if you've got people down there, did you say tattoos and piercings?

RUSH: The odds are pretty good that they're not conservatives, so they are a bunch of liberals, but were they there on purpose or did they just happen to accidentally show up on the way to some parlor? This we don't know.

CALLER: No, no. They were definitely -- according to him, they had signs, you know, tax without representation, all that kind of stuff, and he said that's who was there at the demonstration.

RUSH: Here is Melissa in Manassas, Virginia. I'm glad that you called. Welcome to the program.

CALLER: Thank you so much for taking my call. I've listened to you for years and you are such an inspiration across the board for all of us.

CALLER: I wanted to share my experience yesterday. Myself and four other gray-haired terrorists went into the Washington tea party. It was an awesome experience, and I hope all of your listeners will at least gather some inspiration from my own enthusiasm. I was coined by my own mother when I was a teenager, I was so straight I was boring, which for most teenagers is a pretty odd thing --

RUSH: This is at the White House, right? Across the street from the White House?

CALLER: Yes. I was right across the street from the White House, and now can say I'm feared by Homeland Security and 57-year-old radical extremists. The folks there were fabulous. It was a great crowd. It was wonderful to be with other people who have the same thoughts about our government that I do, that it's too big and spends too much and taxes too much.

RUSH: Somebody threw a box of tea bags over the fence. What did they do? They got you out of there, right?

CALLER: I actually... We had left right after Laura Ingraham spoke. I bet I know who it was, though. There was a gentleman who had on a fishing hook that was to mimic, I think, a colonial tea bag box. It was wrapped in some -- what do I want to say? -- fabric with a hemp tie on it.

RUSH: Okay, so somebody was casting a line. That's what happened. Somebody cast a line to throw the thing over the fence.

RUSH: They shut everything down for a while, because they didn't know what it was. They sent a little miniature robot out there to make sure it wasn't a bomb, and they forced all the journalists back into the White House. Anyway, gotta take a time-out, folks.

RUSH: Larry King Alive last night had Trump on, and King challenged my patriotism because I've ceased doing business in New York and refuse to pay taxes there. So King says, "Rush Limbaugh doesn't live in New York, got out, whatever he had invested, he's gone."

TRUMP: There's no reason for Rush Limbaugh to live in New York, and they raised the taxes, and he said, "Well, now it's time for me to leave." So they brought it up to the breaking point, and he announced that he's leaving New York, and he's gonna save a lot of money by living in Florida.

TRUMP: Well, I don't know that that's necessarily unpatriotic. I think they want to pay taxes. Obviously you have to pay taxes. But they want to pay a reasonable tax, and they don't want to see the money squandered.

RUSH: Exactly right. If you get something for it, if there's some meaning, but this is a leftist trick here to define paying high taxes as patriotic. I think even Biden said it's a patriotic duty to pay higher taxes, when in fact Larry King himself I'm sure has accountants and tax lawyers do everything they can to limit what he has to pay. Everybody that makes a lot of money, anybody that makes money, period, tries to pay as little as they can, within the confines of tax law. By the way, I played golf with Trump on Sunday at his golf course. He is a great golfer. I had seen him out at the AT&T National Pro-Am. I'd never played with him out there, and I'd heard was a five or six hand-- this guy was three under. He hits the ball almost as far as I do. He kept saying, "You didn't know Trump was such a great golfer, you didn't know." "I knew you were good, but I had no idea that you were three under," and this is a 6,800, 7,000-yard course as we played it on Sunday afternoon.

RUSH: Robert Gibbs, the most brilliant, the brightest, the most effective press secretary ever in American history, according to the Drive-By Media, had his White House press briefing this afternoon. We have some sound bites. Question from Jake Tapper at ABC News: "Does the White House have any response to the tea party protest going on across the street and in other parts of the country?"

GIBBS: I don't know if there's a specific response to protests as much as there is, uh, I think you saw the president today talk about as candidate Obama promising to bring a tax cut to 95% of working families in America, and as president, delivering, uh, that tax cut. The president promised significant tax relief for working families in this country and in the first month of his administration delivered just that to the American people.

RUSH: Thirteen bucks. It goes to eight bucks in January. It's not even a tax cut. Next question, Ed Henry from CNN: "On what the president said today, that if you're making 250 grand a year or less your taxes aren't going to go up period. Part of the criticism, if you smoke cigarettes, taxes did go up after the president signed the children's health bill. How do you square those two?"

GIBBS: People make a decision to smoke. People get on airlines and pay taxes to land a plane at O'Hare or in Washington. Those people also got a tax cut. I don't know how much they smoke. I guess that depends on the individual consumption of nicotine habits involved in those at tea parties around the country. Maybe on a rainy day such as today one might light up a few more times in hopes of surviving the drizzle.

RUSH: The caustic hatred coming out of the White House. He's asked a legitimate question about how can you say 95% of the American people got a tax cut, everybody knows the vast majority of poor people are the ones that smoke, taxes went up sky-high for them after the recently imposed April 1st increase on tobacco. Here's Gibbs saying, "Well, depends on the individual consumption and nicotine habits involved in those at the tea parties around the country." So he's making fun of the poor! Gotta love this guy. Savannah Guthrie, NBC. "Do you think these tea parties reflect a genuine grassroots sentiment out there, a frustration with the president's tax policies, or is it something that's contrived?"

GIBBS: Well, you can speak to the organizers, I guess, on the -- whether they're contrived. I think the statistics I read I think are pretty clear. If you make -- if you're -- if you're one of the -- if you're one of the 95% of working families in this country, I think it's that earns less than $200,000 a year, you've seen a tax cut. I'll let the organizers of whatever these are speak to their motivations. I think they can be reasonably assured, though, maybe they fall outside the window of making a quarter of a million dollars --

RUSH: Bob, what the hell is it? They're either smokers who are lining up to smoke cigarettes to get their nicotine fix at the tea parties, the vast majority of people in this country that smoke are poor, or now they're rich people making over 200 grand a year, 250. Bob and the media are missing the point here. This is not just about tax cuts. It is the destruction of the foundation of the country. It is all of this debt being piled up on every future generation we can think of. All of this needless, unnecessary spending that is simply enlarging the role of government in people's lives. These tea party protests are essentially aimed at restoring individual liberty and freedom and stopping this massive assault on it. That's what the tea parties are about. Next question came from an unidentified reporter: "There has been quite a strong reaction to the story that we ran yesterday about this DHS report, right-wing radical groups. You're with the president a bit. Is this on his radar? Does he feel like the concerns have been raised are legitimate? Does he think that it's an overreaction, or is it just not on his radar?" See, we predicted this. Does Obama know about the DHS report? It is Obama's DHS report! The DHS report calling every mainstream conservative a right-wing extremist is who Barack Obama is. So here's a dunce reporter, "Does Obama know about this? I mean, is this even on his radar?"

GIBBS: I haven't spoken specifically to him about the report. I think the secretary of Homeland Security has and will make a statement about this today.

RUSH: Wow, this is reminiscent about when Janet Waco conducted the Reno invasion, and Clinton went out there, (impersonating Clinton) "You have to talk to Janet Waco about that. I have no idea. You gotta go talk to attorney general. That Reno invasion, I was minding my own business, I was in the White House. Actually, I was in a little room off the White House, and I heard that Janet Waco went in there, the tanks and gunfire, so I figured there must be a legitimate reason for it, but you gotta go talk to her." Does Obama know about the DHS report? What does he think of it? You know, with this bunch, I hate it when I'm right. I hate it. It infuriates me.

If you did not see the video of CNN’s Susan Roesgen, here is a fairly good account of it (there is optional video here as well):

A few weeks or months ago, I told you to buy real estate now and become a millionaire. Apparently Donald Trump read this article and is suggesting the same thing now:

In case you missed this last week, “Every Cent you Make” sung by President Obama.

Conservative Review
Issue #71	Kukis Digests and Opines on this Week’s News and Views	April 19, 2009