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

I attempt to post a new issue each Sunday by 2 or 3 pm central standard time (I sometimes fail at this attempt).

I try to include factual material only, along with my opinions (it should be clear which is which). I make an attempt to include as much of this week’s news as I possibly can. The first set of columns are intentionally designed for a quick read.

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

The H1N1 virus appears to at first be a great problem (our own Vice President warns against any sort of public transportation), and now, less and less thought it given to its seriousness.

President Obama gives his 3^rd news conference in 3 months, taking only 13 questions from the press.

Jihad attacks in the 2 weeks ago (April 18–24) have gone up; there have been 38 attacks which have killed 268 people. In the past week, there were 30 attacks in 7 countries taking the lives of over 200 people, which included 2 beheadings and several women and children suicide bombers.

ABC News, which almost blew a gasket of the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame (until it became apparent that Bush, Rove and Cheney did not do it), ran names, addresses and photos of CIA officers associated with enhanced interrogation (Sean Hannity pointed out the disconnect).

Air Force One and one fighter jet cause a big scare when it flies low of New York City, costing taxpayers $329,000. President Obama promises and investigation (how is it possible for the president not to know this happened; this is a lot more than one of the Obama kids grabbing the keys to the car and taking off).

3 of the 5 Muslim terrorists who planned to kill soldiers at Fort Dix were sentence to life imprisonment. Although where these men came from, how they came to live in the United States, and how their plot was uncovered would have made fascinating reading; this was deemed a non-story by mode media outlets (all of them had jobs and/or businesses in the United States).

Attorney General Eric Holder’s former law firm, where he once was a partner, represents 17 Gitmo Detainees. If Holder begins to investigate those responsible for the legal opinions offered to Bush, what impact will that have upon his former law firm? Taxpayer money may be used in order to integrate some of these prisoners into U.S. society.

President Obama signs into law the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act of 2009. Think AmeriCorps crossed with ACORN. It is not there yet, but it will be.

The fortune 500 companies experienced an 85% drop in earnings this past year, which is the largest 1-year decline in the 55 year history of the fortune 500 list. How do you think this will impact our economy?

And although this is not a big story, you did not hear about it: Michelle Obama wears a pair of $540 sneakers to a feed the hungry event. If Sarah Palin’s wardrobe needed to be on the front page of every paper for several days, ought not Mrs. Obama be subject to the same scrutiny?

When shown a video of a million tea bags as purchased by various tea party protestors, Jon Stewart said to them: “You bought a million tea bags to protest wasteful spending. Now, are you protesting wasteful spending or irony?”

Speaking of irony, Pelosi on the budget outline which was just passed: “It is a budget which reduces the deficit.”

Obama on the tea party attendees: "Those of you who are watching certain news channels on which I'm not very popular, and you see folks waving tea bags around, let me just remind them that I am happy to have a serious conversation about how we are going to cut our health care costs down over the long term, how we are going to stabilize Social Security." Let me remind you that FoxNews, the only station which carried any real coverage of the tea parties, is the #1 cable news station, its ratings are generally higher than CNN, MSNBC and Headline News combined. Furthermore, Obama is not going to have a conversation with anyone about these things.

Rahm Emanuel when touting the achievements of President Obama: “We have passed the largest recovery act to put Americans back to work. We have stabilized the financial system. We have helped Americans to keep their homes and millions can now refinance. We have started the process to end the war in Iraq and we have begun getting credit to flow to small businesses.” So, I guess that everything is okay now, or going to be okay soon?

Dennis Miller, “How did we come to the point where Miss USA gets tougher questions than the President of the United States?”

Caller to Rush Limbaugh program, with regards to Air Force One flying low over New York: “Obama is trying to delegate responsibility, which you can't do, something I learned when I was in the Navy. You can delegate authority, but you cannot delegate responsibility.” I realize that what he is saying may not sink in at first.

Peggy Noonan on the media coverage of the Tea Parties: “I also think that it is hard for us who got most of this [information] through newspapers, tv and the web to understand just how large this thing was, because the coverage was so politically charged. Liberal newspapers were subtly dismissive and conservative coverage was more than subtly supportive.”

George Will on the Tea Parties: “What this was about—as was the Boston Tea Party—was barely about taxes but about Parliamentary role our lives...it is the view that we are now in a third wave of government: the expansion of government of the New Deal; then the expansion of government of the Great society; but those people who rallied there were saying this [what government is doing today] is something different; they are erasing the line between the public and private sector.”

Apparently, just about anyone can hop in Air Force One and take it for a drive. Obama did not know it was gone (or so he says) and there was apparently not a single person in the White House who said, “Hmm, flying an airplane low over New York City? Doesn’t sound like a good idea to me.”

Although I like Hannity must less than I liked Hannity and Colmes, his production crew hit it out of the ballpark with Obama’s First 100 Days:

Beck had a pretty good show on Tea Parties, although it admittedly peters out at the end; however, it had a strong start and a good middle:

Cavuto interviews Javier David, who was one of the people who attended one of the tea parties (this is one of the better interviews I have heard):

Laura Ingraham interviews feminist Gloria Feldt regarding the Miss California controversy. Ms. Feldt makes remarks about the breast implants which Miss California (Carrie Prejean) received from the pageant, but denies that she has slammed Prejean in any way. If you want any feminist support, you had better tow the line insofar as leftist philosophy goes. That means, you do not speak out in support of traditional marriage (unless, of course, your name is Obama, and then nothing will be said):

Sam Donaldson apparently thinks that Castro had Kennedy assassinated (or, at least, he sees it as a strong possibility):

1) Up until now, we have shown great progress in Iraq. As President Obama begins to move soldiers out of Iraq and into Afghanistan, violence in Iraq is on the uptick. Despite Obama’s myriad of apologies, Al-Qaeda in Iraq is well aware of our political situation, and Democrats, who were fiercely anti Iraq War (for the past 2 years) are now in charge. If they keep up the pressure, will Obama and a Democratic Congress fold?

2) Another (partial) lie I am tired of hearing: that those who participated in the Tea Parties have no concept of the original Tea Party. All most people know about the original Tea Party is the rallying cry of “No Taxation without Representation.” However, what most people do not know (including Janeane Garofalo), is that the taxed tea was no more expensive than the untaxed tea. Parliament gave the struggling East India Company exclusive rights to bring their tea to the United States, and Britain reduced the levy on the tea, but added a tax to the tea paid for by the colonists. The end result was cheaper tea. So it was not the amount of the tax the colonists were disturbed about; it was that there was any tax whatsoever. Fast forward to 2009: there is talk of a carbon tax or a carbon emissions cap and trade; the end result is going to be much higher energy costs. Of course, Obama promises to rebate some of this money to the consumer. Now, although this was not altogether intentional, do you see the parallel now?

3) Do not forget, the highest Bush deficits occurred during the Democratic Congress; and spending bills are initiated by Congress.

4) Do you remember just how ballistic the press went over the firing of a 8 U.S. Attorneys? This was despite Clinton firing 93 attorneys (including the one who was investigating him and his wife). Where is the outraged press concerning Eric Holder and his former law firm?

5) Lies I am tired of hearing: that the information about the torture was already out there (what was not out there was how restrained this torture was and that we had doctors standing by).

6) Lies I am tired of hearing part II: the information gotten from torture could have been gotten in some other way. This is offered without any proof whatsoever or with distortions.

7) Lies I am tired of hearing part III: [so-called] torturing was a recruitment tool. Will fanatical Islamic terrorists see that these memos are out and that Obama will no longer torture and then decide, “No more reason to fight the great Satan.” They will use the memos already released to recruit more terrorists, telling them, “This was the most the United States was willing to do and now they are not willing to even do this.” They will also use the photos which are about to be released as a recruitment tool.

8) Michael Steele determined that his family of 4 (him, his wife and 2 children) that the Obama debt placed upon his family is $500,000.

9) As a candidate, President Obama expressed essentially the same opinion as Carrie Prejean (Miss California). Where was the outrage against Obama?

10) Before the Great Depression, unemployment figures for Blacks were around 3%, slightly lower than for whites. Since then, there have been umpteen programs to fix all of the problems which Blacks face. Now, regardless of where you stand on the political spectrum, do you think the last 60 years has helped African Americans economically? In case you need help with that thought, right now, unemployment for Blacks in many large cities is in the 15–30% Great Depression range.

11) This is the first time I have heard a president tell us to wash our hands and cover our mouths when we cough. The fact that Obama is telling us this should be a clue as to how he thinks of the American people—not smart enough to deal with the flu.

12) Obama did say something complimentary about Bush and what was done during the bird flu epidemic; I must admit, I almost fell out of my seat when I heard that.

13) I was glad to see that Bill Kristol agrees with me that, since the enhanced interrogation memos are now out there, let’s have a frank and open investigation of all aspects of this (I am sure he regularly checks CR before forming an opinion).

14) Biden, almost on script for once, says that we need to reduce our energy costs and reduce our medical costs. So we are going to put these two things in the hands of our federal government, because it is so famous for controlling and reducing costs?

15) One of the Obama proposals, which I admit, I did not quite get at first—government provided internet, particularly for rural areas. I understand, of course, that a liberal likes government-sponsored everything, but they key is, if the government subsidizes it, then the government has a say as to regulating it.

16) One of the most peculiar arguments from the left is, torture doesn’t work. If it is absolutely wrong and immoral to use enhanced interrogation, then any additional argument is specious. Although Obama was factually wrong about Churchill being unwilling to treat German prisoners harshly even though England was being bombed, his philosophy is clear: if the United States was being bombed, it is still immoral to treat prisoners harshly in order to obtain information which might protect Americans.

17) We will find out if Obama has any moral fiber. We know that he believes torture to be wrong and that enhanced interrogation under the Bush administration was torture, in his opinion. As Americans find out more and more about this issue, and line up against Obama, what will Obama do? Will he take a real moral stand or will he just let this issue fade into the background?

18) What demonstration during the Bush years matches the tea parties of Obama’s first 3 months?

You no doubt heard that 90% of the guns seized in Mexico came from the US. Wrong. 90% of the traceable guns came from the US. In total, that is 17% of the guns seized by Mexican officials.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 41% would vote for their district's Republican candidate while 38% would choose the Democrat. I know most of you did not see this in your news reports.

58% disapprove of declassifying CIA memos because it compromises national security.

37% of voters now believe the U.S. legal system worries too much about protecting individual rights when national security is at stake.

46% of voters disagree with Obama's decision to close the prison camp for terrorism suspects at the Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba

51% of Americans in favor of an investigation into the use of harsh interrogation techniques on terrorism suspects during the Bush administration. Count me as one of those; and I want those self righteous Democrats who have had a sudden conversion, like Pelosi, who claim not to know what was going on before.

55% of Americans believe in retrospect that the use of the interrogation techniques was justified, while only 36% say it was not

Game show where people have to identify whether some action is a college fraternity initiation or whether it is torture used on our enemies. The writer could simply google his script.

House Democrats John Barrow, Dan Boren, Bobby Bright, Travis Childers, Joe Donnelly, Bill Foster, Parker Griffith, Suzanne Kosmas, Frank Kratovil, Dennis Kucinich, Betsy Markey, Jim Marshall, Jim Matheson, Mike McIntyre, Walt Minnick, Harry Mitchell, Glenn Nye, Tom Perriello, Gene Taylor, Harry Teague all voted against Obama’s 2010 budget outline. Senators Evan Bayh and Ben Nelson vote against Obama’s budget.

For some of these spending bills and bailouts, various Congressmen are receiving high volumes of calls against the massive spending which they are doing, often 80% and above opposed to this Congressional spending spree. A majority of Democrats are ignoring the public in this regard.

[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. Another aspect of this is offering up a slogan or an attack upon some villain rather than to make a clear statement or to give a clear answer.]

President Obama: “I will do whatever is required to keep the American people safe.” But, as Meatloaf sang, “I won’t do that” (enhanced interrogation). Personally, I want a president who is willing to go to jail (because of whatever techniques he authorizes) in order to protect the American people. I want a president who has enough acorns to do what his own wife would do, if it came to the safety of his own children.

The contradictions between Obama's words and actions are many. He opposes big government, and then he vastly expands it. He says he favors bipartisanship, but doesn't practice it. He says he is against earmarks, and then signs the largest pork package in history.

Obama has discontinued one line of GM car (the volt) and fired the CEO of GM; but he comes out and says he has no interest in running GM.

Just to be absolutely clear, President Obama: you would not authorize any extreme form of questioning (e.g., waterboarding) of enemy combatants, even if the end result would be risking the lives of Americans?

If you have not seen on your news station Obama being unable to continue his speech when his teleprompter gets messtup.

If you think that Obama, as a Senator, had nothing to do with the deficit he inherited.

If all you know about Rush Limbaugh’s recent 1.5 hour address is, “I hope he fails.” If you do not know a single other quote, then you have fallen for what the media wants to spoon feed you.

If you think the Republican Party is the party of no and has not made any contributions to what we ought to be doing.

If you think that this is the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression (although, it is possible that we could get into Jimmy Carter era stagflation and unemployment).

If you think that Obama’s story about Churchill not using methods of enhanced interrogation (he used the word torture, of course) while England was being bombed is true.

The Stimulus Bill was not really a stimulus bill, but a bill which would pour huge amounts of money into the economy (paid for by taxpayers) over the next several years. Although this, in part, accounts for the uptick in the stock market, there is nothing put forth by Obama or Congress which will strengthen business. The stock market will creep up, with a lot of sideways movement, mostly in tandem with stimulus bill spending, and then go into another free fall. The stock market will, of course, be impacted negatively as consumer confidence diminishes (which it will) and if unemployment continues to rise (which it will).

Although Obama has recently spoken again about our dependence upon foreign oil, I can guarantee you that, unless the carbon tax or cap and trade are so onerous as to increase gas to $5/gallon, we will fall behind in this area.

Quite obviously, nothing will be done in the Obama administration or with a Democratic Congress when it comes to nuclear power.

What will be fascinating is when, in 2010, there are a majority of Republicans in the House. Obama has almost never compromised, he has never been a unifying political figure, and he has never dealt with people who (1) are opposed to him and (2) have the actual power to oppose him. You will see Obama campaign mode like you have never seen before and, if it does not work, it is hard to figure out what he will do. Nobody has ever said no to Obama before, so things could get very ugly.

While officials in the Obama White House dismissed yesterday's "100 Days" anniversary as a "Hallmark Holiday," they understood it was what sociologist Daniel J. Boorstin called a "pseudo-event." By that, Boorstin meant an occasion that is not spontaneous but planned for the purpose of being reported -- an event that is important because someone says so, not because it is.

What happens in a president's first 100 days rarely characterizes the arc of the 1,361 that follow. Jimmy Carter had a very good first 100 days. Bill Clinton did not.

Still, a president would rather start well than poorly -- and Mr. Obama has a job approval of 63%. That leaves him tied with Mr. Carter, one point ahead of George W. Bush, and behind only Ronald Reagan's 67%. Four of the past six presidents had approval ratings that ranged between 62% and 67%, a statistically insignificant spread.

Mr. Obama is popular because he is a historic figure, has an attractive personality, has passed key legislation, and receives adoring press coverage.

However, there are cautionary signs. Mr. Obama's policies are less popular than his personality, the pace of polarization with Republicans has proceeded faster than ever in history, and independents are thinking more like Republicans on the issues and less like Democrats.

The first 100 days can reveal a pattern of behavior that comes to characterize a presidency. In this respect, there are two emerging habits of Team Obama worth watching.

One is the gap between what Mr. Obama said he would do and what he is doing. His administration is emphasizing in its official 100 days talking points steps he has taken to "deliver on the change he promised." During the campaign, Mr. Obama denounced the $2.3 trillion added to the national debt on Mr. Bush's watch as "deficits as far as the eye can see." But Mr. Obama's budget adds $9.3 trillion to the debt over the next 10 years. What happened to Obama the deficit hawk?

From Mr. Obama's Denver acceptance speech through the campaign, Mr. Obama did not publicly utter the phrase "universal health care." Instead, his campaign ran ads attacking "government-run health care" as "extreme." Now Mr. Obama is asking, as he did at a townhall meeting last month, "Why not do a universal health care system like the European countries?" Maybe because he was elected by intimating that would be "extreme"?

Another emphasis in the Obama 100 days talking points is that the president is a decisive leader. However, Mr. Obama is enormously deferential to Democrats in Congress and has outsourced formulation of key policies to them. He appears largely ambivalent about the contents of important legislation, satisfied to simply sign someone else's bill.

On the $787 billion stimulus package, he specified less than a quarter of the bill's spending and let House Appropriations Chairman Dave Obey decide the rest. On cap and trade, Mr. Obama is comfortable to let Democratic Reps. Henry Waxman and Edward Markey write that legislation with virtually no White House guidance. On health care, the White House is providing very little detail. Mr. Obama tees up an issue, but leaves its execution to congressional Democrats.

This leadership style may be a carryover from his Senate years, when he was unusually detached from the substance of legislation. Mr. Obama's focus on broad descriptions of a goal will produce laws, but handing over control of the process may produce deeply flawed products.

The stimulus bill turned into a liberal spending wish list that will retard, not hasten, recovery. Already, with mounting job losses the gap between the 3.675 million jobs he said he would create or protect in his first two years and the number of actual jobs in the economy has risen to nearly five million. Reaching his job target now requires creating 249,400 new jobs a month for the next 20 months. Democrats will not fare well in next year's elections if there is a yawning Obama "job gap."

Democratic congressional leaders are ecstatic about Mr. Obama's willingness to outsource major legislation to them. They thrive on sausage making and, with the president's popularity high, they appreciate that his strengths are not their strengths. Yet Mr. Obama clearly did not gain their respect for his legislative abilities during his Senate years.

Mr. Obama is a great face for the Democratic Party. He is its best salesman and most persuasive advocate. But he is beginning to leave the impression that he is more concerned with the aesthetics of policy rather than its contents. In the long run, substance and consequences define a presidency more than signing ceremonies and photo-ops. In his first 100 days, Mr. Obama has put the fate of his presidency in the hands of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. He may come to regret that decision.

[Ann makes the same point I made last week (but more humorously); when it comes to interrogation methods, is that all that we do?]

On April 29, the U.S. will have survived the first hundred days of President Barack Obama. Of course, unemployment is up and the stock market is down, but the president's optimism is still unbounded. Mr. Obama's staff is encouraging writers to find parallels to FDR and his first hundred days as president 75 years ago during the Great Depression. Let's take the challenge: Here are three points of similarity between the two presidencies.

First, President Obama, like FDR, has used the economic emergency to pass massive spending bills. For example, Obama warned of dire consequences if Congress failed to pass his 1,100 page emergency "stimulus bill" of $787 billion. Congressmen had no time to reflect on the bill, or even read it. They passed a bill that would spend $25,000 per second every second of the year 2009--without serious debate. In doing that, President Obama was taking a page from FDR's emergency banking bill, which the House passed, sight unseen, after only thirty-eight minutes of debate. As Congressman Robert Luce of Massachusetts responded, "judgment must be waived. argument must be silenced, we should take matters without criticism lest we may do harm by delay." The atmosphere in the House in 2009 was almost identical.

Second, President Obama, like FDR, has already begun centralizing power in the executive branch. For example, Obama is already trying to move the Census Bureau into the executive department, from the Commerce Department, to control the counting of the U. S. population for the 2010 census -- which will help to determine congressional representation and federal funding. In FDR's first hundred days, he moved to control the currency -- the banking bill gave him control over the movement of gold, and the Thomas Amendment to the Agricultural Adjustment Act allowed the president to issue greenbacks or tinker with gold and silver, as he saw fit, to promote inflation.

Third, President Obama is following FDR by vilifying businessmen. On TV, we see Mr. Obama pointing his finger at bankers, cajoling executives at credit card companies, and regularly denouncing "Wall Street greed." In doing so, Obama has followed FDR's script. In his first day in office, Roosevelt set the tone for his relentless attacks on businessmen: "rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence.. The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization."

What is disturbing about these parallels to FDR's first hundred days is to contemplate the next 2,500 days of that bygone era. Where did the cries of emergency, the centralization of power, and the vilification of business take the nation? The answer is class warfare, a deeply divided country, and 18 percent unemployment. The Great Depression of the 1930s lingered -- and lingered, and lingered. It could do nothing else. Massive federal spending merely transferred money from the wallets of average Americans to the hands of federal bureaucrats. As taxes rose to a top marginal rate of 79 percent under FDR (Obama has already promised to raise the current marginal rate on top incomes), entrepreneurs had no incentive to take what capital they had left and start new businesses, or expand existing ones. Uncle Sam wanted almost four out of five of their last earned dollars for taxes. Class warfare, and the redistribution of income, had knocked the creativity out of a generation of entrepreneurs -- some of whom in the 1920s had either invented or expanded the production of radios, talking movies, air-conditioners, zippers, scotch tape, and even sliced bread.

In running for re-election in 1936, FDR said, "They [businessmen] are unanimous in their hate for me -- and I welcome their hatred." He had found, as his speechwriter Ray Moley pointed out, that "every time they [businessmen] made an attack on him. he gained votes and that the result of carrying on his sort of warfare was to bring the people to his support." In other words, FDR had discovered a striking paradox: Attacking businessmen, and raising their taxes, prevented the Great Depression from ending, but it won votes from Americans who came to believe that businessmen were their enemies and FDR was their "fireside chat" friend.

As in the case of FDR, President Obama will soon approach a fork in the road -- does he cut tax rates on income and capital gains, and give incentives to entrepreneurs to invest, or does he continue to vilify businessmen and risk another Great Depression?

Without any pretense of an argument, which liberals are neurologically incapable of, the mainstream media are now asserting that our wussy interrogation techniques at Guantanamo constituted "torture" and have irreparably harmed America's image abroad.

Only the second of those alleged facts is true: The president's release of the Department of Justice interrogation memos undoubtedly hurt America's image abroad, as we are snickered at in capitals around the world, where they know what real torture is. The Arabs surely view these memos as a pack of lies. What about the pills Americans have to turn us gay?

The techniques used against the most stalwart al-Qaida members, such as Abu Zubaydah, included one terrifying procedure referred to as "the attention grasp." As described in horrifying detail in the Justice Department memo, the "attention grasp" consisted of:

"(G)rasping the individual with both hands, one hand on each side of the collar opening, in a controlled and quick motion. In the same motion as the grasp, the individual is drawn toward the interrogator."

There are rumors that Dick "Darth Vader" Cheney wanted to take away the interrogators' Altoids before they administered "the grasp," but Department of Justice lawyers deemed this too cruel.

Is Shariah law coming to a court near you? Get "Stealth Jihad" - Robert Spencer's expose about efforts to quietly establish the Muslim system in Amerca

And that's not all! As the torments were gradually increased, next up the interrogation ladder came "walling." This involves pushing the terrorist against a flexible wall, during which his "head and neck are supported with a rolled hood or towel that provides a C-collar effect to prevent whiplash."

People pay to have a lot rougher stuff done to them at Six Flags Great Adventure. Indeed, with plastic walls and soft neck collars, "walling" may be the world's first method of "torture" in which all the implements were made by Fisher-Price.

As the memo darkly notes, walling doesn't cause any pain, but is supposed to induce terror by making a "loud noise": "(T)he false wall is in part constructed to create a loud sound when the individual hits it, which will further shock and surprise." (!!!)

If you need a few minutes to compose yourself after being subjected to that horror, feel free to take a break from reading now. Sometimes a cold compress on the forehead is helpful, but don't let it drip or you might end up waterboarding yourself.

The CIA's interrogation techniques couldn't be more ridiculous if they were out of Monty Python's Spanish Inquisition sketch:

So you think you are strong because you can survive the soft cushions. Well, we shall see. Biggles! Put her in the Comfy Chair! ...

Now - you will stay in the Comfy Chair until lunchtime, with only a cup of coffee at 11.

Further up the torture ladder - from Guantanamo, not Monty Python - comes the "insult slap," which is designed to be virtually painless, but involves the interrogator invading "the individual's personal space."

If that doesn't work, the interrogator shows up the next day wearing the same outfit as the terrorist. (Awkward.)

I will spare you the gruesome details of the CIA's other comical interrogation techniques and leap directly to the penultimate "torture" in their arsenal: the caterpillar.

In this unspeakable brutality, a harmless caterpillar is placed in the terrorist's cell. Justice Department lawyers expressly denied the interrogators' request to trick the terrorist into believing the caterpillar was a "stinging insect."

Human rights groups have variously described being trapped in a cell with a live caterpillar as "brutal," "soul-wrenching" and, of course, "adorable."

If the terrorist manages to survive the non-stinging caterpillar maneuver - the most fiendish method of torture ever devised by the human mind that didn't involve being forced to watch "The View" - CIA interrogators had another sadistic trick up their sleeves.

I am not at liberty to divulge the details, except to mention the procedure's terror-inducing name: "the ladybug."

Finally, the most savage interrogation technique at Guantanamo was "waterboarding," which is only slightly rougher than the Comfy Chair.

Thousands of our troops are waterboarded every year as part of their training, but not until it was done to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed - mastermind of the 9/11 attack on America - were liberal consciences shocked.

I think they were mostly shocked because they couldn't figure out how Joey Buttafuoco ended up in Guantanamo.

As non-uniformed combatants, all of the detainees at Guantanamo could have been summarily shot on the battlefield under the Laws of War.

Instead, we gave them comfy chairs, free lawyers, better food than is served in Afghani caves, prayer rugs, recreational activities and top-flight medical care - including one terrorist who was released, whereupon he rejoined the jihad against America, after being fitted for an expensive artificial leg at Guantanamo, courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer.

Only three terrorists - who could have been shot - were waterboarded. This is not nearly as bad as "snowboarding," which is known to cause massive buttocks pain and results in approximately 10 deaths per year.

Normal human beings - especially those who grew up with my older brother, Jimmy - can't read the interrogation memos without laughing.

At Al-Jazeera, they don't believe these interrogation memos are for real. Muslims look at them and say: THIS IS ALL THEY'RE DOING? We do that for practice. We do that to our friends.

But the New York Times is populated with people who can't believe they live in a country where people would put a caterpillar in a terrorist's cell.

In his press conference Wednesday night, President Obama offered a nice little sermonette on "shortcuts."

Asked about his decision to release the "torture memos" and ban waterboarding, Obama said: "I was struck by an article that I was reading the other day talking about the fact that the British during World War II, when London was being bombed to smithereens, had 200 or so detainees. And Churchill said, 'We don't torture,' when ... all of the British people were being subjected to unimaginable risk and threat. ... Churchill understood, you start taking shortcuts, over time, that corrodes what's best in a people. It corrodes the character of a country."

Churchill and Great Britain didn't quite take the firm stand against "torture" that Obama suggests. During the war, the Brits ran an interrogation center, "the Cage," in one of London's fanciest neighborhoods, where they worked over 3,573 captured Germans, sometimes brutally. The Free French movement, headquartered in London, savagely beat detainees under the nose of British authorities. From 1945 to 1947, Col. Stephens himself ran the Bad Nenndorf prison near Hanover, Germany, where Soviet and Nazi prisoners were treated far more brutally than those at Guantanamo Bay. Stephens was court-martialed, and cleared, for some of the alleged atrocities.

A new Rasmussen poll on President Obama is somewhat startling and worth analyzing because Rasmussen is very accurate.

According to the data, 34 percent of Americans strongly approve of the president's job performance, while 32 percent strongly disapprove. So that's why the debate over Barack Obama is so raucous. He may be a popular guy, but the country remains divided on the job deal.

Also, 73 percent of Americans now expect government spending to rise. That's up from 54 percent last November.

But get this: Just 69 percent say Barack Obama is a political liberal. What? Where are the other 31 percent? Oh, they think he's a moderate or something.

Are you telling me that a third of the country doesn't know the president is a liberal guy? Can that be possible? Sadly, the answer is yes.

The president presents himself as a moderate, a man who believes in tradition and a free market place. But that is not who the president really is, and his voting record, his appointments and his vision for the country prove it.

President Obama really believes the federal government has an obligation to insure a certain quality of life for everyday Americans. He really believes he can convince the world to help us fight evil people by using logic and reason. He really believes that evil people should not be compelled to divulge information, even in life-death situations. He really believes that wealthy Americans owe a large chunk of their prosperity to other folks not as prosperous. And he really believes social engineering, not self-reliance, should be the theme of government.

Those are all liberal tenets, but apparently 31 percent of Americans do not know this.

Now, there is nothing wrong with having a liberal belief system. But the president's job is to solve problems and keep us safe, and herein lies the problem.

The best example I can give you is national security, your personal safety. By reversing the Bush anti-terror policies, Mr. Obama has tied the hands of American counter-intelligence agents. No longer are they on the offensive. Some experienced agents have quit; others are phoning it in.

According to Stratfor, the USA is reverting back to the failed counter-intel policies before we were hit on 9/11. The enemy well understands the shift in American policy and is stepping up terror activity in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, while at the same time Iran and North Korea continue to give the world the middle finger.

So presidential rhetoric aside, the unintended consequences of the president's first 100 days have dramatically altered the terror battlefield. No question.

The president is a sincere man. I believe that. But I do not believe he truly understands evil, and his liberal policies will have a very hard time containing it. Wait and see.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: You may not always agree with me, but if you take a look at what I said I was going to do when I was running for office and you now look at what we are in the middle of doing, we're doing what we said we'd do.

SEN. JON KYL, R-ARIZ.: This will go down in history as the most expensive 100 days for the American people.

HOUSE SPEAKER NANCY PELOSI, D-CALIF.: Someone asked me, what mark would I give the president in his first 100 days? I'd definitely give the president an A.

SEN. KIT BOND, R-MO.: Message to the administration: Get a new calendar. The election is over. With victory comes responsibility. It is now up to the Obama administration to keep our nation safe.

BRET BAIER, HOST: Well, there are some of the sights and sounds of President Obama's 100th day in office. It has been an interesting 100 days.

As you look at some of those images, here are some excerpts, a brief one, from tonight's opening remarks at the prime-time news conference.

He says: "All of this means you can expect an unrelenting, unyielding effort from this administration to strengthen our prosperity and our security in the second 100 days, third 100 days and the days after. We're off to a good start, but it is just a start."

Let's bring in our panel: Fred Barnes, executive editor of The Weekly Standard; Juan Williams, senior correspondent of National Public Radio; and syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: Well, he told us a completely unreal mark, that it was a Hallmark holiday. And then he jets off to Missouri to celebrate, spewing carbon into the atmosphere as he goes. But that's how Obama is: He always has it both ways.

I think it hasn't been the most important 100 days. I think it has been the most revealing 100 days in our lifetime. After all, this man when he was elected was one of the great mysteries of American politics. He was the most unknown, untested, untried, and really un-figured-out man ever to ascend to the office. And in the first 100 days, he has told us who he is.

Before his inauguration there was a big debate. Is he a centrist who talks a good centrist game, or is he a leftist who talks a good centrist game? Now we know.

He is a man who has expressed in the joint address to Congress, in the budget, and again in the speech he gave to Georgetown a few weeks ago, a radical domestic agenda which involves, as he puts it every time, a holy trinity of health care reform, by which he means nationalizing health care, and he wants to federalize education with essentially a federal guarantee of college education and to seize control of the energy economy with a carbon tax.

And this is all in the service of leveling the differences between rich and poor and leveling the differences between classes.

That's as radical an agenda since FDR and I think even more so, since FDR entered office willing to experiment. Obama knows where he wants to go to establish more social democratic America and he has told us exactly what it is in the first 100 days.

BAIER: Juan, we should point out the Democratic Congress passed the press president's budget outline today without a single Republican vote

JUAN WILLIAMS, SENIOR CORRESPONDENT, NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO: I think that what Charles calls "radical," I would call "necessary." Clearly the country is in very dramatic and desperate times with regard to the economy.

We're in the midst of war, and we have to take steps there to protect ourselves. So he sent additional troops in Afghanistan.

He has made a decision on Iraq that is consistent with what he promised to do during the campaign. Actually, he has extended that timetable a little longer, and instead, he is going to keep 50,000 troops there.

So I think on the national security front, I don't think this is very radical. In fact, I think in some ways it's a continuation of the Bush policies.

If you're looking at the domestic side, I come back to the fact that I think this is a dramatic, desperate time in terms of dealing with the economy. In fact, in the comments that he will make tonight, he talks about trying to pull America out of what he called "the wreckage of this recession."

And I don't think if you're unemployed, and if you look at the unemployment rate right now, if you look at the high level of poverty in the country, I don't think you'd say that's radical to say we're going to step in and spend a lot of money in terms of stimulus.

There are some economists who think we haven't spent enough as a percentage of GDP to really make this correction.

But I still think it's a lot of money because of deficits. And I think the Republicans have been wise to say watch for that spending, because you're putting the burden on future generations.

But that's not to say that you shouldn't do anything, and the Republicans have not come up with other ideas for how they would get us out of that position.

FRED BARNES, EXECUTIVE EDITOR, THE WEEKLY STANDARD: Juan, Juan, Juan, please. They get little attention, but Republicans have come up with alternative, an alternative budget, alternative health care plan. They have all that. Look, it's all about Obama now, so the Republican alternatives don't get attention.

One thing is for sure. Obama says he is doing what he said he would do, and that's just not right at all. I don't remember him saying that he would expand the role of government in the first 100 days.

And I think these 100 days not only revealing, but also important, because he has expanded the role of government so much, he has increased deficits and wants to continue these huge deficits at third world, Argentine and Bolivian levels, that we've never seen in America before. He certainly didn't talk about that.

Remember what he said, Juan. He said "I'm going to be a save and invest president, not a borrow and spend president." He's a borrow and spend president.

Now, look, what's happened is enormously important. This is the most important 100 days in a long, long time, because he's changed the whole direction of government in a short period of time, and plans to continue on the new path. That's for sure.

BARNES: No, I don't. Look, did he have to take over General Motors and Chrysler? Does he have to own 80 percent of AIG? Does he have to have the power to tell banks how much to have and to...

KRAUTHAMMER: I'm critical of Obama, but I'm not sure I'm ready to call him a Bolivian yet.

This letter is respectfully submitted to inform you that I must decline the invitation to participate in the May 4 roundtable meeting the President's Task Force on Detention Policy is convening with current and former prosecutors involved in international terrorism cases. An invitation was extended to me by trial lawyers from the Counterterrorism Section, who are members of the Task Force, which you are leading.

The invitation email (of April 14) indicates that the meeting is part of an ongoing effort to identify lawful policies on the detention and disposition of alien enemy combatants -- or what the Department now calls "individuals captured or apprehended in connection with armed conflicts and counterterrorism operations." I admire the lawyers of the Counterterrorism Division, and I do not question their good faith. Nevertheless, it is quite clear -- most recently, from your provocative remarks on Wednesday in Germany -- that the Obama administration has already settled on a policy of releasing trained jihadists (including releasing some of them into the United States). Whatever the good intentions of the organizers, the meeting will obviously be used by the administration to claim that its policy was arrived at in consultation with current and former government officials experienced in terrorism cases and national security issues. I deeply disagree with this policy, which I believe is a violation of federal law and a betrayal of the president's first obligation to protect the American people. Under the circumstances, I think the better course is to register my dissent, rather than be used as a prop.

Moreover, in light of public statements by both you and the President, it is dismayingly clear that, under your leadership, the Justice Department takes the position that a lawyer who in good faith offers legal advice to government policy makers-like the government lawyers who offered good faith advice on interrogation policy-may be subject to investigation and prosecution for the content of that advice, in addition to empty but professionally damaging accusations of ethical misconduct. Given that stance, any prudent lawyer would have to hesitate before offering advice to the government.

Beyond that, as elucidated in my writing (including my proposal for a new national security court, which I understand the Task Force has perused), I believe alien enemy combatants should be detained at Guantanamo Bay (or a facility like it) until the conclusion of hostilities. This national defense measure is deeply rooted in the venerable laws of war and was reaffirmed by the Supreme Court in the 2004 Hamdi case. Yet, as recently as Wednesday, you asserted that, in your considered judgment, such notions violate America's "commitment to the rule of law." Indeed, you elaborated, "Nothing symbolizes our [administration's] new course more than our decision to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay.. President Obama believes, and I strongly agree, that Guantanamo has come to represent a time and an approach that we want to put behind us: a disregard for our centuries-long respect for the rule of law[.]" (Emphasis added.)

Given your policy of conducting ruinous criminal and ethics investigations of lawyers over the advice they offer the government, and your specific position that the wartime detention I would endorse is tantamount to a violation of law, it makes little sense for me to attend the Task Force meeting. After all, my choice would be to remain silent or risk jeopardizing myself.

For what it may be worth, I will say this much. For eight years, we have had a robust debate in the United States about how to handle alien terrorists captured during a defensive war authorized by Congress after nearly 3000 of our fellow Americans were annihilated. Essentially, there have been two camps. One calls for prosecution in the civilian criminal justice system, the strategy used throughout the 1990s. The other calls for a military justice approach of combatant detention and war-crimes prosecutions by military commission. Because each theory has its downsides, many commentators, myself included, have proposed a third way: a hybrid system, designed for the realities of modern international terrorism-a new system that would address the needs to protect our classified defense secrets and to assure Americans, as well as our allies, that we are detaining the right people.

There are differences in these various proposals. But their proponents, and adherents to both the military and civilian justice approaches, have all agreed on at least one thing: Foreign terrorists trained to execute mass-murder attacks cannot simply be released while the war ensues and Americans are still being targeted. We have already released too many jihadists who, as night follows day, have resumed plotting to kill Americans. Indeed, according to recent reports, a released Guantanamo detainee is now leading Taliban combat operations in Afghanistan, where President Obama has just sent additional American forces.

The Obama campaign smeared Guantanamo Bay as a human rights blight. Consistent with that hyperbolic rhetoric, the President began his administration by promising to close the detention camp within a year. The President did this even though he and you (a) agree Gitmo is a top-flight prison facility, (b) acknowledge that our nation is still at war, and (c) concede that many Gitmo detainees are extremely dangerous terrorists who cannot be tried under civilian court rules. Patently, the commitment to close Guantanamo Bay within a year was made without a plan for what to do with these detainees who cannot be tried. Consequently, the Detention Policy Task Force is not an effort to arrive at the best policy. It is an effort to justify a bad policy that has already been adopted: to wit, the Obama administration policy to release trained terrorists outright if that's what it takes to close Gitmo by January.

Obviously, I am powerless to stop the administration from releasing top al Qaeda operatives who planned mass-murder attacks against American cities-like Binyam Mohammed (the accomplice of "Dirty Bomber" Jose Padilla) whom the administration recently transferred to Britain, where he is now at liberty and living on public assistance. I am similarly powerless to stop the administration from admitting into the United States such alien jihadists as the 17 remaining Uighur detainees. According to National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair, the Uighurs will apparently live freely, on American taxpayer assistance, despite the facts that they are affiliated with a terrorist organization and have received terrorist paramilitary training. Under federal immigration law (the 2005 REAL ID Act), those facts render them excludable from theUnited States. The Uighurs' impending release is thus a remarkable development given the Obama administration's propensity to deride its predecessor's purported insensitivity to the rule of law.

I am, in addition, powerless to stop the President, as he takes these reckless steps, from touting his Detention Policy Task Force as a demonstration of his national security seriousness. But I can decline to participate in the charade.

Finally, let me repeat that I respect and admire the dedication of Justice Department lawyers, whom I have tirelessly defended since I retired in 2003 as a chief assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York. It was a unique honor to serve for nearly twenty years as a federal prosecutor, under administrations of both parties. It was as proud a day as I have ever had when the trial team I led was awarded the Attorney General's Exceptional Service Award in 1996, after we secured the convictions of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman and his underlings for waging a terrorist war against the United States. I particularly appreciated receiving the award from Attorney General Reno-as I recounted in Willful Blindness, my book about the case, without her steadfastness against opposition from short-sighted government officials who wanted to release him, the "blind sheikh" would never have been indicted, much less convicted and so deservedly sentenced to life-imprisonment. In any event, I've always believed defending our nation is a duty of citizenship, not ideology. Thus, my conservative political views aside, I've made myself available to liberal and conservative groups, to Democrats and Republicans, who've thought tapping my experience would be beneficial. It pains me to decline your invitation, but the attendant circumstances leave no other option.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Waterboarding violates our ideals and our values. I do believe that it is torture. That's why I put an end to these practices. I am absolutely convinced it was the right thing to do, not because there might not have been information that was yielded by these various detainees who were subjected to this treatment, but because we could have gotten this information in other ways.

BAIER, "SPECIAL REPORT" HOST: One of the president's answers to one of many questions on waterboarding and enhanced interrogation techniques. What about this and these subjects from last night's news conference? Let's bring in our panel, Bill Kristol, editor of "The Weekly Standard," Mara Liasson, national political correspondent of National Public Radio, and syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer. Charles, let's start you with.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: Well, when you hear him airily say that we could have gotten the information from other means, you have to ask yourself, isn't that exactly what was attempted. And the reason they resorted to the enhanced interrogation is because it didn't work.

And in the case of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the guy who they knew was the mastermind behind 9/11, the man who boasted of personally beheading Daniel Pearl with a butcher knife, he was asked politely about the plans that he knew about, and his answer was "Soon you will know," meaning you will be looking in the morgues, counting the American dead, looking in hospitals at those who were destroyed, bodies destroyed in a future attack of which he will tell you nothing right now. That's why they used enhanced interrogation, which worked.

There was also a question of timing. It is true that you can use the good cop routine, in which you earn the trust of the prisoner over time and get information. Nobody denies that.

The problem is it can take weeks or months or longer. And after 9/11, we did not have the luxury of weeks or months or longer in a situation in which America had been attacked and we knew almost nothing about Al Qaeda and its plans. That was a matter of urgency.

And to airily say today we might have used other techniques I think is incredibly irresponsible.

BAIER: Mara, intelligence officials says 14 of the 16 high-value targets we captured were trained to resist interrogation. Isn't the president opening himself up with this answer?

MARA LIASSON, NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO: You know, this is the most controversial decision the president took. And I thought his answer last night was really interesting on a lot of levels.

He said at one point he thinks that the American people over time will recognize that he made the right decision, that it's better to stick with who we are even when we are taking on an unscrupulous enemy and not use these techniques.

That was a recognition that the public is split on this, unlike some of his other issues where he's way ahead of the Republicans. People be approve of what he is doing on big margins. On torture, it's about half and half of what people think about this.

And I think in terms of him opening up, he also said he knows that in the end he will be judged as commander in chief by whether he keeps the American people safe.

If there is another attack, of course he is opening himself up to this. Did he do everything he possibly could to prevent this? Was there someone in custody who could have had the information?

He knows that this is a really difficult area for him, and that it is impossible to prove his argument that we could have gotten this information from other means. Maybe we could have. Maybe we couldn't have. There is no way of knowing.

And to make the argument that we're safer now, it's also impossible to prove, unless we just continue to go on without another attack.

All he can say is I have put this nation on a stronger moral standing because this country doesn't torture, and kind of leave it at that without the other arguments.

BILL KRISTOL, EDITOR, "THE WEEKLY STANDARD": I think it's a little worse. I mean, the president says he believes we could have gotten this information without using the enhanced techniques.

The CIA in the memos that the president released, the Office of Legal Counsel of Justice quotes the CIA saying you have told us that you would have not been able to obtain this information from these detainees without these enhanced techniques.

The actual legal memos tell the CIA you can't use the enhanced techniques unless you only think you have to, and you only can think you have to if the regular techniques don't work.

They tried the regular techniques first. I don't know if the president has not read the memos that he released, but he is not just saying who knows, it is hard to say. Now he is saying that I suppose these CIA agents were inept in using the regular techniques, didn't want to use the regular techniques.

They tried the regular techniques. They didn't work. That's why they went to three instances of waterboarding. That's why they went to a few dozen instances of the enhanced interrogation techniques.

BAIER: I want to turn the corner to another answer play a quick sound byte from the president last night.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: I am always amused when I hear these criticisms of, oh, Obama wants to grow government. No. I would love a nice lean portfolio to deal with. But that's not the hand that's been dealt us.

KRAUTHAMMER: Look, that's a very clever answer. Look, it's true he's not interested in running GM or Chrysler. He was not elected in order to be charge in AIG or Citicorp.

However, he's announced over and over again he wants to run American healthcare, a sixth of the U.S. economy. He wants federalize education. And he wants to have control of our energy, decide by the federal government what kind is used, how much, and at what price, which is essentially a way of controlling the entire economy since it all depends on energy. So he wants to expand government and make it large, except not in these small areas in which he mentioned. A clever answer, as always, but slightly disingenuous - actually, largely disingenuous.

LIASSON: That was in answer to the question about what he was going to do now that he is going to be a majority shareholder in a number of companies - automakers, financial institutions. In some cases, the U.S. will be the majority shareholders, and shareholders have some rights and some responsibilities. And how is he going to exercise them?

And I think what he was saying there was, you know, I have a lot of other things I want to do, transforming healthcare and energy and education. Running these companies is the last thing he wants to do.

And it comes with all sorts of conflicts of interest. Does he want to enact industrial policy through his ownership of these companies, or does he want to try to get the highest return for the taxpayers' dollars, who are now invested in this companies? It's going to be a lot of headaches.

BAIER: Bill, quickly, overall thought about the news conference - were you enchanted?

No, actually, I wasn't. The media is totally enchanted. The reviews are unbelievable. "The New York Times" reporter asked - was so enchanted that he asked Obama what he found enchanting. And then everyone was enchanted with each other.

I actually think, and Charles has pointed out, he is too clever by half. This is wearing thin. If he wants to say we need to take control of the auto companies, we can improve their performance. We need to take control of the banks, we need to change the healthcare system, say it and make the argument for it.

The disingenuous of "I didn't want to do any of this. I'm just forced to do it" is wearing a little thin.

A few weeks ago, I explained why Obama is disingenuous when he complains about the deficit he inherited. As a member of Congress, where all spending bills originate, Obama voted for all of the deficits which he now attributes to the previous administration. If you will recall, Bush even trimmed the Democratic budget (but not enough, in my opinion). AP finally does a story on this (and on other Obama myths):

The Miss California organization pays for breast implants? This is quite weird, and I am having

trouble believing it, is that the organization Miss California paid for these breast implants? Co-director for Miss California, Keith Lewis, says that is the case (he also says that some girls just opt for using chicken cutlets and tape in order to improve their bust size. Does this mean that anyone who goes this high in the Miss California contest can make some sort of a formal requests for bigger breasts, and the Miss California organization will pay for it? How long has this been going on? Do all Miss Whatever-State get breast implants if they ask for them? Do they have to win their state in order to get implants? I cannot believe that the media is not exploring this story in more depth. There has to be before and after photos of these various contestants; can Carrie be the first (if, in fact, this actually happened). And where is the outrage against the Miss California organization? Is this right or legitimate for such organizations to hand out boob jobs?

While the 200,000 or so tea party demonstrators functioned without incident, May Day demonstrations in Europe erupted into violence (there were only 700 demonstrators in Berlin).

RUSH: Last night I was in Los Angeles, flew out there right after the program yesterday -- actually, Beverly Hills. Michael Milken, who is a friend of mine, who I've met during charitable endeavors, he runs the Prostate Cancer Foundation. I actually met him via our, you know, Night of the Century cigar nights that Marvin Shanken, Cigar Aficionado, puts on every year in New York, canceled this year, by the way. They didn't want to do the deal this year because it would be ostentatious to have a black-tie dinner at a restaurant in New York during the economic downturn, so they didn't have it this year, but Milken has this thing every year called the Milken Institute Global Forum, and he brings in people from all over the world, some of the wealthiest tycoons in the world, and it's a three-day seminar, and there are programs, speakers, panel discussions all day long. Last night was a debate, and the participants in the debate were Harold Ford, Jr. of Tennessee, and Willie Brown, the former mayor of San Francisco, and the speaker of the California assembly and myself with Ed Gillespie, who is the former chairman, Republican National Committee, and he was the assistant to George W. Bush after Karl Rove left.

The moderator of the debate last night was the estimable Frank Luntz, and I will admit this, we've got audio sound bites from it, but it was a profound challenge. I tried to warn 'em about this. It was in the main ballroom of the Beverly Hilton, which, if you're a pop culturite, if you watch the Golden Globes, it's the same place that they do the Golden Globe awards. But the acoustics in there were just such that I was unable to understand one word any of the other participants were saying, other than Gillespie, who was seated to my left. I got most of what he said, but the sound system speakers were in front of us, and there was nothing but reverb and echo. To this moment, I can't tell you one thing Harold Ford said last night. I know a couple things that Willie Brown said. But I was unable to interact as a result of this because I had no clue. I was turning my head toward them and I was covering my ear to try to hear them. It wasn't room noise, it was just the reverberation and echo. A lot of people, even though I go to great pains to explain it, it's hard to understand, if you can hear it, they think it's automatic you can understand it. It's hard to explain to people how, yeah, I hear the noise, but I can't make out the words. 'Cause nobody's experienced that, that can hear.

If you don't use hearing aids, if your hearing is normal, if you can hear somebody in a crowded room, if you can hear the words, you can make it out, but that was not the case and often isn't the case for me in crowded circumstances or places with bad acoustics. So I was unable to interact. I was able to answer Luntz's questions about this, but, folks, I've got the audio from it. It went about an hour and ten minutes or so. I flew back and we touched down about five o'clock in the morning here, and I slept about an hour-and-a-half on the airplane. I knew if I went home and tried to sleep two or three hours, I would feel horrible all day today after having awakened after only two or three hours. These kinds of nights with only 90 minutes sleep I tend to get giddy during the course of the program. Yes, the staff looks very much forward to this each and every time. So, anyway, I want to talk to you about the audience that was there. Now, I didn't have a chance to meet the audience. We were in a greenroom, so to speak, backstage, the speaker's prep room, but I knew who they were.

These are the Masters of the Universe. These are some of the most achieved, some of the most accomplished financial and business people from all over the world, including here in the United States. And they've been corrupted, these Masters of the Universe. Not all of them, but many of them, I could tell by the applause I got. They don't really dig many of Obama's policies, but they love him, and they don't react well to criticism of him. It was disappointing, in a way, because there's a definite left-ward tilt in the corporate world, not just corporate America, but in the corporate world, and these are the people this man is targeting. For example, last night, one of the comments I made, I said, "Look what's happened to the hospitality business. Obama is actually urging people not to go to Las Vegas." Well, now, were there people in that room last night who own hotels in Las Vegas and somebody told me after the evening was over, somebody came and said, you know, somebody shouted "screw Las Vegas" when you said that. So here you have a room of highly achieved tycoons who have the same attitude as people who have fallen victim to class envy in the middle class or whatever.

It was interesting. It was very fun. It was a lot of fun, it was friendly, and I've met Harold Ford and Willie Brown numerous times before, get along with both of them, we had a great time, fist bumps with them all night long, and Willie Brown's a fun guy. But there were so many cliches last night, "The last eight years of Bush were just horrible. We need to resurrect America from the horrible last eight years." What do you mean? We had a great economy the last eight years. In this room, you could hear a pin drop. It's like they just don't hear this. Everybody has so bought into the myth that everything that happened the last eight years was a total disaster. It was an eye-opening experience, and we'll talk about it further as the program unfolds before your very eyes and ears.

RUSH: We're gonna start with audio sound bites from the debate last night, the Milken global forum, Milken Institute Global Forum. The subject was Obama's first hundred days, various political topics. And the first sound bite here, the moderator had asked everybody to rate Obama's first hundred days. Harold Ford gave Obama an A-minus, Willie Brown gave Obama a straight A, and then they asked me for my grade, and this is how it started.

RUSH ARCHIVE: Barely a D. (laughter and cheers) Now, look, we have been chatting backstage before we came out and it's very lively, and right now we're all friends. (laughter)

RUSH ARCHIVE: But these three people are all involved in electoral politics. That's their business. And I'm not. You know, I look at these in an entirely different way. (laughter) No. Getting an audience and getting votes are two different things. I don't pander. I don't lie. I don't say things I don't believe to get an audience. No, no. Everything's from the heart. I mean, when I say, "I want Barack Obama to fail," I mean it. (laughter) But let me tell you -- let me define it. I do -- and he has not failed, by the way. The country is going to need to be resurrected if he's not stopped. I do not want the federal government and the United Auto Workers owning General Motors, Chrysler, and Ford. (applause and cheers) In fact, I'm afraid if you go buy a car in the next six months you're going to automatically be registered as a Democrat. (laughter) It's going to come with an Obama

hood ornament and a built-in bumper sticker that you can't remove. (laughter) And you're going to go out and all the union guys are going to be the salespeople. If you don't buy it's either your kneecaps or your signature. (laughter) I don't want the federal government owning the banks and the financial system. (applause)

See, I have a different view of government. I am really, really fed up, more with the US Congress than I am with Barack Obama, because Speaker Brown is right: Barack Obama is who he is. He told everybody what he's going to do, and he was going to do it. Most of his supporters really don't care what he's doing. He's a cult-like figure. He makes them feel good. All of these... Like the airplane, Air Force One. His own office of military whatever it is in the White House. You can't get more "we" than his own White House staff, and he said, "I learned about the flyover in New York City the same time you didn't." He didn't know? I'm sure that his supporters are going to say six months down the road, "He didn't know this was gonna lead to even more unemployment. He didn't know," because there's a cult-like attachment to him. But the US Congress, these people have helped create the problems in the subprime mortgage mess, the banking system that we have, and it offends me that they get to sit around and act like spectators like they had nothing to do with it and then bring everybody in and crucify 'em. If we're going to do that, then bring Barney Frank in and crucify him and Chris Dodd, and (applause) some of the other people who forced the banks to go do something. We have really, really, really big problems.

RUSH: So those were my opening remarks last night at the Milken Institute Global Forum, and we have, let me see, how many more sound bites here? Three, four, five... Looks like we've got six of them. So we've got five more to go.

RUSH: I don't really remember the questions that I was asked -- and, again, I have a hearing problem, and I had trouble interacting with people. So I basically said what I said in response to questions that I got from the moderator. Here's the second sound bite.

RUSH ARCHIVE: Let me sum up the Barack Obama domestic agenda in one sentence and idea: I believe it is Obama's purpose to return the nation's wealth to its "rightful owners." I believe that Barack Obama comes from a life experience that believes that the wealthy, the accomplished, and the achieved come by their gains in an ill-gotten way, and they need to have it taken away and redistributed. See, I believe the smallest minority in the world is the individual. And if you don't respect the individual, then you really can't say you're for minority rights. We're all different. We were all endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights: life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. The Democrat Party is not supporting any of those three. They're not supporting life. They're not supporting liberty. We're losing liberty every day.

RUSH: Again, the audience here was 1,500 to 2,000 of the wealthiest tycoons from all over the world. In that bite you could hear, you could hear a pin drop in there, right? Because I will guarantee you, they're not hearing these kinds of things either at things like this or within even their own closed circles. In the next bite, I take on the myths of "green energy," the Bush economy. You will hear the audience groan here.

RUSH ARCHIVE: This notion that we have to become a collective and all work together toward what? A lawnmower with two seats on it and call it our new car? (laughter) Green energy, which is a total myth. The eight years of Bush were a disaster? The eight years of Bush as a disaster, is a media myth. (groaning) The economy, under the Bush admin... He can tell you better than I can, but the economy during the eight years of Bush, coming out of 9/11, tax cuts created all kinds of prosperity for people. This belief, though, that somehow the rich take what they have from the middle class and the poor is just silly. Look at what President Obama has done to the hospitality business. Talk to anybody in Las Vegas. He's urging people not to go! CEOs are afraid to fly their planes 'cause they're going to be tattled on. So if you have this class envy that is so popular -- that all we're here to do in America is get even with those who have achieved -- then this administration is for you. Otherwise, we are headed to a place where we are going to have to be resurrected.

RUSH: I remember now. I was following a comment that Willie Brown made, that Barack Obama is "resurrecting" this country from the previous eight years, which were a disaster. Now, the next... The estimable moderator, Frank Luntz, ran around and asked everybody about the AIG bonuses. Should the AIG bonuses have been retracted? Should they not have been paid? Should the executives at AIG have been forced to give them back? And, of course, Mayor Brown, Congressman Harold Ford, said, "Yes, yes! Get that money back! That's outrageous. They shouldn't have that money," blah, blah. They went to Gillespie; Gillespie offered what he had to say, and then they came to me, and they said, "Okay, what about the AIG bonuses?"

RUSH ARCHIVE: These bonuses, folks, are irrelevant! It was 100-some-odd million compared to $176 billion they were given. Where did that money go? Some of it went to Goldman Sachs. This business of harping on the achievers is nothing but pure political class envy that is designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator of American voter, which right now more and more of them are having to be unemployed. (applause) This is about building the Democrat Party. It's not about building America. All this talk... There is not one government program of any size that has worked. We started the War on Poverty; we still got it at the same percentage. We have started the Great Society. None of these programs work, but we're not allowed to say that. We're not allowed to look at the results. We're supposed to look at the good intentions of the people who do them. This country is in debt to the point that people who have not yet been born are broke! (laughter) We have tried spending money to fix problems, and it never works. And the premises here, "What would you do different? What would you do with the TARP money?" Why do we need TARP money? (applause) "What would you do with the stimulus?" Who says government can stimulate the private sector? It cannot. Government stimulates the Democrat Party. (laughter) Nationalizing businesses, nationalizing banks is not a solution for this Democrat Party; it's the objective. And that's not what this country was founded on, and it's not what made this country great, and it's not how individuals and entrepreneurs prosper. The environment's getting much, much tougher. All of these premises... AIG bonuses are irrelevant.

RUSH: Now, I think the money quote, if I have allowed the money quote myself -- May I money quote myself? Yes. "Nationalizing businesses, nationalizing banks is not a solution for this Democrat Party; it's the objective." It's simple, sweet, brief. "Brevity is the soul of wit." (interruption) You don't think that's the money quote, Snerdley? (interruption) Mmm-hmm. Well, okay, yeah, yeah, "Government stimulates the Democrat Party." Yeah, okay. I said that before, "Government stimulates the Democrat Party." True. All right. Next, I guess there was a discussion of the tax code and raising taxes and how that was justified and so forth. It got around to me, and this is what I said.

RUSH ARCHIVE: What is the purpose of the tax code? For Barack Obama, the purpose of the tax code is to take money away from people so that they become more dependent on government. Pure and simple. What's the proper amount of taxation? As little as possible to inspire people to work their asses off, so they will work hard and pay as much taxes as their rate requires. (applause) Ronald Reagan takes office 1980, '81. The top marginal tax rate is 70%. Total take to the Treasury, $500 billion. Eight years later, the top rate's down from 70 to 28%; the take to the Treasury is $950 billion. Look at the Bush tax cuts. They generated revenue for Washington. They also created individual liberty and freedom and entrepreneurism. That is what the Democrat Party doesn't like. The more people freed, the more people entrepreneurial, the more people who are independently achieving, the less chance you have to control them. So this notion, you know, we're gonna... I guarantee you that Obama's tax increases are gonna reduce the amount of revenue that Washington produces. The deficits are going to be twice as high, at least, than what he's projecting, because the revenue's not gonna come in. Look, we're losing 600,000 jobs a month. They're saying it's not going to improve until we get to 10%. Would somebody tell me how an unemployed person contributes to deficit reduction? It just doesn't happen. So all of this is just... We're 180 degrees out of phase here in terms of, "What's the goal? Raise revenue to run the government. How best to do that? Turn the American people loose.

RUSH: It really is. This is a point that I've been arguing with Democrats and liberals about all my life. If you really want to raise revenue to the Treasury, there are blueprints of how to do it. Kennedy cut taxes, raised revenue. Reagan did it. Bush has done it. Raising taxes on people does not raise revenue. Raising taxes depresses the activity that's being taxed. It causes less of that activity to take place. But as I say, there were just so many myths and cliches that were being discussed last night that it afforded me the opportunity to speak outside them. This is... I guess we're getting toward the end, and they had to get on to foreign policy, and this is what I had to say. I think Luntz was asking people, how is it for the president to run around and speak to our enemies. And this was my contribution to that.

RUSH ARCHIVE: The United States is a great nation at great risk. We have a lot of enemies. The enemies range from people who don't like us because of our size, our achievement, our economy, our productivity; they don't like our way of life; they don't like our allies. Talking to people who dislike us, this is Conflict Resolution 101 from the seventh grade. It's not going to solve any problem. We cannot. It really pains me to see the president of the United States go around the world and apologize for this country hoping that... (applause) I know what he's trying to do. Barack Obama thinks that -- and a lot of Democrats think -- the country is unjust and immoral, has been for a long time, compounded under Bush. I know what the template is. And that if we just run around and say, "Look, we're different. We're morally superior. We're better people. We're different now. You can trust us. We're not from the old country here that was racist, sexist, bigoted, and so forth and so on," and I think all that does is convey weakness to our enemies. I think it generates laughter. I think Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's insane. He's sworn to blow Israel off the map. He believes -- and his fundamentalist religious beliefs are what propel him. The idea that we can somehow change Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's attitude towards us by having talks is ridiculous.

RUSH: To the phones, and we're going to go to La Jolla, California, we have somebody who was in the audience at the Beverly Hilton last night for the Milken Institute Global Forum. It's Noni. Am I pronouncing that right? Hi, Noni. Welcome to the program. Nice to have you here.

CALLER: Yes, I was at the conference last night. My husband is there right now, and when he'd heard that you were on the panel he called and I raced up yesterday afternoon. He was able to get me a pass. And, Rush, I was thrilled to be there. I absolutely loved your tie. And we were at a table of ten people. Our host and hostess, she was from Russia; he was from Budapest. And probably out of the ten of us, four were conservatives, the others were liberals. And acoustics were bad in that room, Rush. I could tell you were having trouble hearing, but I just wanted you to know that you did have many fans there. But when you were speaking, of course, the liberals at the table several times were booing, and my one Russian hostess was cheering, and I was a little bit more conservative with my clapping, because I didn't want to embarrass my husband, who is not as outgoing a conservative as I am. And she just said, "Noni, don't hold back. I was in Russia with a socialist. I wasn't able to get my feelings out, and I lived in New York and I was intimidated by liberals," and she said, "No more." So I just really enjoyed it, Rush. You did a great job.

RUSH: Thank you, Noni, very much. It was fun. It was fun, but the acoustics were bad. I couldn't hear what any of the guys up on stage with me were saying, but I could gauge reaction, I could distinguish between applause and boos and hisses, and I could hear silence, I could hear when they were doing nothing. And I loved it because I guarantee you there were a lot of people in that room who showed up not having any idea they were going to hear anything close to what I said, and I'm sure that a lot of people were, "Whoa, what is this?" They are thinking about it a lot today.

CALLER: You made it entertaining. I mean people were laughing and I think they were enjoying you in spite of themselves. I mean, it was just great, and I think my husband is definitely more of a fan now than before. I mean I listen to you constantly, and he doesn't listen to you as much, but I think after last night, he's come around.

RUSH: Well, I appreciate it, that's great. I'm glad that you were able to get through today, Noni, and I'm glad that you were able to get up there to see it. Mr. Milken only called me last Wednesday to ask me if I could do this, and I was fortunate to have the date open. He also just secured Speaker Brown, Mayor Brown late last week as well, too. He always had Harold Ford and Ed Gillespie. But it was fun. I enjoyed it. I'm glad you were there. I'm glad you called. Thank you so much.

RUSH: This is April the 29th, 2009. What are you doing today, ladies and gentlemen, to honor this day? What are you doing to honor April 29th of 2009? It's one of the greatest days in our nation's 233-year history. April 29th, today. A day shall live in ecstasy. Because today, ladies and gentlemen, is the one-hundredth day of the reign of The One. The Messiah. Lord Barack Obama the Most Merciful. We are blessed with the smartest president in our nation's history, but he is more than smart, ladies and gentlemen. He is wise. Barack Obama not only knows what's best for our country. He knows what's best for your family. He knows what's best for your children. Barack Obama knows what's best for you. Amidst such greatness, what are you doing to honor the one-hundredth day of Obama?

I'll tell you what I would like to propose, ladies and gentlemen. I would like to propose, since most of the country -- no, not most, but a decent portion of the country -- has already effectively done this. I would like to propose the Obama Power of Attorney Letter for any and all Americans to sign on this, the one-hundredth day of his magnificent presidency. You can honor President Obama and at the same time sign over complete control of your life to him, because he knows what's best for your country. He knows what's best for your family. He knows what's best for your children. He knows what's best for you. Why not sign over complete control of your life to President Obama, with the Obama Power of Attorney Letter? No more worries about taxes. Obama will take what's fair. Career decisions? You're worried about career decisions? No problem!

Obama will tell you what to do. He will tell you where to do it and he will tell you what your compensation will be. (For those of you in Rio Linda, that's your salary. For those of you in Port St. Lucie, it's your wages.) Regardless, Obama will tell you what to do, where to do it, and what your compensation will be. Health care? No worries! Sign it over to President Obama in the Obama Power of Attorney Letter. Obama will assign you a doctor, Obama will tell you when you can go see your doctor, and Obama will tell you and your doctor how much your doctor can charge you. And you won't pay. Obama will pay! Who wouldn't sign the Obama Power of Attorney Letter? He's gonna get you a job. He's going to tell you where to do that job. He's going to tell you how much you're going to make. He's only going to tax what's fair. He's going to assign you a doctor.

He's going to assign you a health care plan. He's going to tell you your doctor how much or how little the doctor can charge, and Obama's going to pay for it. You will not have to pay a thing. You won't have to worry about what to wear; you won't have to worry about what to think. You won't have to worry about where to pray. You won't have to worry about what car to drive, because the smartest and wisest man in history will plan this for you. He will decide for you what you are to wear, what to think, where to pray, and the kind of car you should drive. Best of all, the power goes not to President Obama for a mere four-to-eight years, but to Barack Obama himself for his entire lifespan, because, ladies and gentlemen, do you realize how rare it is that a person of such magnanimity and greatness and compassion and intelligence walks among us?

Do you realize? Obama's greatness cannot be contained by a four- or eight-year presidency. The greatness of Barack Obama is such that even after he leaves office, he should still run your life. He's that good. He's that compassionate. He's that understanding. Turn over every aspect of your life to Barack Obama -- not the president. Barack Obama the man. All it takes is your signature; notarized, signed by two witnesses and your spouse. The Obama Power of Attorney Letter. You will never again have to make one of our irresponsible, ill-considered decisions ever again. Obama will make all of the wrong decisions for you. As the years go on, we will have testimonials from people who have signed the Obama Power of Attorney Letter, who will tell us how Obama has just made their life perfect. I have a sample of what the Obama Power of Attorney Letter is. It's very simple. I have it right here. (shuffling papers) I'm holding it here in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers.

"I (fill in your name and address) do hereby appoint Barack Obama, my attorney in fact, to act in my name, place, and stead in respect to the following matters: the vehicle I drive, the salary and bonuses I receive, the job I get, the education my children get, all medical matters, and all tax matters. This durable power of attorney shall extend through his entire term as president, and beyond: through the rest of his remaining years as a mortal walking the sod of planet Earth," and then you simply sign it, and you get a notary public out there to day-date and signature it and so forth, and your problems are over.

Your cares have ended; your worries cease to exist, all because you realize the greatness you found yourself among on the one-hundredth day of his presidency: blessed with the smartest president in our nation's history, more than smart, he's wise. He knows what's best for our country; he knows what's best for our allies. He knows what's best for the world! He knows what's best energy-wise. Why, you sign over your power of attorney to Barack Obama, and you never again have to worry about a thing! McDonald's will always have McNuggets, and you'll never, ever have to call 911 when they don't. There's also a simpler way, ladies and gentlemen, to sign the Barack Obama Power of Attorney Letter, and that's just vote for the guy.

RUSH: I want to take the occasion while I have your attention here. This press conference last night, again, there was not a single question about the shrinking gross domestic product, or shrinking economy. Not a single question about this massive debt that's being piled up for generations. Not a single question about the outrageous budget that was just passed by Congress. Not a single question about nationalized health care plans. This is such an opportunity, such an opportunity for an articulate, attractive conservative candidate to take Obama and the liberal media apart. This is not the time for a conservative Republican to think, "Okay, I gotta go be a little like Obama in order to get votes." That's not how he's getting them. He's not getting votes, he's not getting the majority of his support from policy.

He's getting the majority of his support from personality, celebrity, cult-like characteristics, but not from policy. The biggest mistake the Republicans could make is to look at this and say, "I guess we need to come out with our own version of a national health care plan, just a smarter one. I guess we need to come out with our own version of bigger government." No! It's just the opposite. Never, ever has there been a better time to contrast the views of the founding principles of conservatism with what is happening now. There is such a hunger. Do you know yesterday Obama went out there to that town hall in Arnold, Missouri, Fox High School? Did you know that there were hundreds of protesters outside? There were. I didn't know it, either, 'til I got a newspaper story about it.

Hundreds of protesters outside! There is a hunger for an alternative way to manage this country's affairs. I think -- I really do -- the way I look at this, Obama is extremely vulnerable to a full-fledged conservative attack right now. The public hates the media, for good reason. Last night's press conference being just the latest example. His policies are not all that supported. His policies are radical. His policies aren't gonna work. That press conference last night, it was a worthless exercise in inside-the-Beltway game playing. The public learned nothing, but they swooned. They swooned and they felt good, but they didn't learn anything. But our side should have. Our side should have been uplifted by the fact that he's getting weaker in terms of policy, and he's vulnerable.

RUSH: It is, folks, it is a golden opportunity. Obama and the Democrats own everything. This is the time to provide the contrast. Look, the president of the United States moving heaven and earth to fix General Motors, Chrysler, and a bunch of banks, moving heaven and earth. And what is he doing in the process? He's putting his people in charge. The United Auto Workers in significant ownership positions of both General Motors and Chrysler, the Treasury department in banks. Meanwhile, institutions of the federal government are in far, far, far more trouble than General Motors or Chrysler. In the private sector, if a business fails, you go to bankruptcy, you reorganize, hurts a little awhile, you come back stronger. The market has winners and losers every day. Not everybody in the market's smart. They get outsmarted, some people get outworked. It's the way it works. Government has a monopoly on everything it does. And right now, for all the trouble General Motors and Chrysler and the banks are in, how about Social Security? How about Medicare and Medicaid?

While the president's moving heaven and earth to, i.e., supposedly fix these private sector firms -- actually take them over -- he's also responsible for fixing Social Security. It is going broke, and we don't hear a single proposal from him on that, because we cannot hear from President Obama that anything about the government is wrong at all. There is no mistake, there is nothing going wrong, there's no crisis and no emergency in government. All of the crises, all of the emergencies are in the private sector, and that's why we need to remake America. Medicare, Medicaid, going broke. His proposal is to take over the entire health care system, which is completely opposite of what the lessons are from government running Medicare and Medicaid in the first place. President Obama does not fix anything. President Obama does not reform anything. He just keeps grabbing and spending and dictating to enhance his own authority, and that of the government. And in the process, the Obama administration is killing the United States economy as he remakes America.

Now, the economy is going to fight back. There are too many millions of Americans who are not going to sit out there and take it. They want the best life has to offer. They know that they're Americans and they're going to do what they have to achieve it, regardless the penalties that they will face from Obama, and regardless the obstacles put in their way. And as these millions of Americans, many of you among them, fight to improve your lives despite the penalties coming in taxes, despite the obstacles, you're going to be innovative, you will go to work, you will try to create, you will try to produce. That's who we are, and that's how we work. And this is going to bring the economy back. The economy will come back. It's just that Obama's making it much more difficult. He is punishing us, smearing us, denouncing us. Barack Obama smears and denounces, punishes those who seek success for themselves and for others. Says he wants to remake America. He is never asked, "Under what constitutional authority are you free to remake America?" He's never asked, "Remake it from what?" He's never asked, "What's wrong with or about America?" Now, he will apologize all over the world for things he thinks we have done or things that we are that are immoral and unjust.

Somebody in the press corps never stands up -- golden opportunity for a Republican or a conservative here once again -- "Mr. President, don't you recognize America is a magnificent country, the most magnificent country, made up of millions of people who are inventing and producing on their own, without you yelling at them and telling them how to work and how to live and behave? How did these people, how did this country get so great before you came along, Mr. President? How is it that we came to dominate and rule the world for good before you came along? And since you've come along, Mr. President, all you've done is impugn, criticize, punish, and put obstacles in the way of people who are truly great in this country." I just look at this and I'm stupefied why there's any fear. If you're going to be afraid of somebody's effect on people, and if it's going to silence you, "Well, we just gotta let Obama run his course," we're going to have even more problems. Mr. President, when you say you're remaking America, are you condemning the American people? What do you mean, remake America? Who is America? The United States of America is her people. Going to remake what? The United States of America is not the United States government. The United States is her people. Are you condemning the American people?

This is really radical, folks, remaking America, he said it last night, remaking America starts now. When we call President Obama on this remaking America nonsense, truly a radical notion, why, we're told that we're overreacting. And once again, he's praised by the media for remaking America. But when he's criticized for it, we're told we're overreacting. Just give him more time. This is why the media are a joke and why I see so many opportunities for a conservative to take on Obama and whip him politically. Americans love their country. They don't believe it's a nation built on hate. They don't believe America's a nation built on class warfare. Americans don't believe that this is a nation built on government power and so forth. Obama has been able to slither and slide between the lines, been able to say he stands for America's traditions while he trashes them. It's not that he is so clever or so good at spin. It's that we lack the leadership to seize the moment and call him on this phoniness.

RUSH: Mitchell, 18 years old, Traverse City, Michigan. Hello, and welcome to the Rush Limbaugh program. Hi.

CALLER: I was just calling to talk to you. I'm a senior in high school and today I was on the Internet reading Fox News, and my teacher came up behind me and found out I was reading Fox News and yelled at me in front of the whole class and said I was not allowed to read Fox News in class, that I'm only allowed to read BBC and stuff of that nature.

RUSH: Wait a second. I want to get a picture here. You've got your computer on in class. You're legally allowed to have the computer on in class?

CALLER: Yes. There's a whole bunch of computers in the classroom. It's a computer classroom and I'm sitting there, and he comes up behind me and I'm reading Fox News.

CALLER: It's a video production class, and I'm already done with the video I was producing, so...

RUSH: So you're reading Fox News, the teacher comes up and spots that, says, "You can't read that!" in front of the whole class?

CALLER: In front of the whole class. And then he proceeded to give me a ten-minute lecture on why I can't read Fox News.

CALLER: Something like they actually know that they have, you know, conservative views they're trying to push on me and all these different things that there are speaking points that they tell their reporters to report on to get me to believe certain ways and that I can only listen to BBC and other news venues.

CALLER: No, but I pulled up the Rush Limbaugh page directly after that, just to tick him off some more, but he walked away because he was so mad at me before I could show him.

RUSH: Well, you must try. That's great. Now, this is fabulous. That's guts! That's courage! Tell him he can't listen to Fox, pulls up my website. Do it again with the teacher behind you. Be defiant there. Because we lie. We lie. We're "spreading propaganda." It's scary. It is really scary to find out just how ignorant and stupid so many American teachers in this country are. They're just activists. They're nothing more than activists. They're not teachers at all.

RUSH: I guess about 45 minutes ago I'm sitting here minding my own business, bothering nobody in the process of doing show prep and I get an e-mail from a Drive-By Media guy that I like, Chris Cillizza, who writes the blog The Fix at the Washington Post. And he says, "I'm doing a story here on Souter and the Supreme Court nomination that Obama's got coming up here, and I want know if you think that the Republicans will be making a mistake by really opposing this or should they not do anything?" I'm paraphrasing the question. I wrote him back and I said, "I look at all of this from a different template than you guys do." I said, "The fun for me is going to be watching all the nutcases on the left go wacko trying to convince Obama to pick one of their own. The Republicans, you know, any time they seriously contrast themselves with Obama, I think it's a win-win for them." But I said, "You're focused on what the Republicans are going to do. When did it change that you don't focus on the people who have power? I mean, you continue to look at the Republicans here, but the Democrats are the ones that have power, and the real fun for me is going to be watching all these wacko fringe nutcases from the blogs and everything else start pressuring Obama to pick somebody like Ward Churchill." (laughing)

Now, we've got some great audio sound bites of what Obama thinks of the court anyway. That's coming up on the program today. I also told Chris, I said, "I'm also going to keep a sharp eye to see if his nominee has a tax problem because that seems to be standard operating procedure for Obama cabinet picks, and now we'll see if it holds for Supreme Court nomination." The search will be on for a Supreme Court nominee who has a tax problem. Supreme Court justice David Souter leaving the Supreme Court in June so all the liberal eyes now turn to Obama for a replacement. A name, his first appointment destined to be reported. By the way, whoever he picks, just like Gibbs is the greatest PR guy, the greatest spokesman ever, whoever he picks, we're going to hear it's the smartest, the best, nobody could have ever found a person this good and this qualified to be on the Supreme Court. We all know the nominee is going to be a liberal. I mean, that's a given. Will it be an African-American liberal? Will it be a female liberal? Will it be an African-American female liberal? Or will it be an African-American female liberal from Chicago? Or will it be a Latina, a Hispanic woman?

Now, the early betting right now is on Sonia Sotomayor, who is Hispanic, and it's a little early to go on that stuff. As I say, whatever names surface there are going to be some leftists unhappy about it. Now, you have to understand, too, that when liberals start choosing nominees to the Supreme Court, they don't necessarily go find people who have any knowledge of the law. Obama looks at the Supreme Court -- you'll hear this coming up in the sound bites -- Obama looks at the court and he wants people who have the proper feelings. He wants people who empathize with the downtrodden. If they know the law, so much the better. But do you know a Supreme Court justice does not have to be a lawyer? A Supreme Court justice does not have to have ever argued a case in court.

Let's go to the audio sound bites, and let's listen to what the Drive-Bys are saying as regards the Supreme Court opening created by the announced retirement of David Souter. We have a montage here today: Robin Roberts of ABC, George "Stephy" Stephanopoulos of ABC, Chuck Todd from NBC, and Chris Wallace of the Fox News Channel talking about who Obama might pick.

STEPHANOPOULOS: President Obama has said that he wants to add another woman to the court. I would say the leading candidate is Judge Sonia Sotomayor. She would be not only a woman but the first Hispanic.

TODD: ...the pressure to appoint a woman. But the Hispanic community really would like to see the first ever Hispanic Supreme Court justice.

WALLACE: A lot of pressure to appoint a woman, lot of pressure to appoint a Hispanic, the first Hispanic. How about a twofer: Sonia Sotomayor, uhhh, you know, an appeals court judge and Hispanic woman. You heard it here first.

RUSH: Well, the pressure already being brought to bear, according to the Drive-Bys, for an Hispanic woman. The pressure, it must be unbearable for Obama. The pressure being brought to... By the way, somebody sent me a note during the break saying I mispronounced Sonia Sotomayor's name, that her name is actually pronounced Sonia So-to-my-or, not as in "mayor." It's spelled S-o-t-o-m-a-y-o-r. These guys all pronounce it Soto-mayor, as I did, but I'm told it's pronounced So-to-my-or. Regardless, we're covering our bases. Who is she? She is a judge now on the court of appeals. I'm not sure which circuit she's on, but she's one of these judges that allows her personal views to be a factor in the way she decides cases. She gave a speech at Berkeley in 2002.

She said "she believes it is appropriate for a judge to consider their 'experiences as women and people of color' in their decision making, which she believes should 'affect our decisions as judges,'" and that's right up Obama's alley. That's, as you will hear in the program today, exactly the kind of judge Obama wants. In recent case, Ricci v. DeStefano, Judge Sotomayor was chastised by fellow Clinton-appointee Jose Cabranes for going to extraordinary lengths to dispense with claims of unfair treatment raised by firefighters. Judge Sotomayor's panel [of judges] heard a case raising important questions under Title VII and equal protection law, but attempted to dispose of the firefighter's arguments in a summary order, until called out by Judge Cabranes. The Supreme Court has agreed to review the case."

Anyway, that's the big name. There are other names on the list, too. You're looking women: Elena Kagan, Diane Wood. We'll see, but it's not going to change the balance of anything, folks. I mean, Souter for the most part votes with the libs. Whoever Obama picks is going to be a lib (probably with a tax problem) and so the balance won't be upset. It's just that we gotta get a younger lib. But we all knew this. I mean, this is the exact kind of thing that was going to happen on Supreme Court nominations, what with Obama winning the presidency.

RUSH: Let's go to sound bite number four. Show you that the -- as the way the libs look at judges, Supreme Court or otherwise, it's all about identity politics. On the Today Show today, Matt Lauer talking to Chuck Todd. "Why don't we take these two things and combine them; the pressure to appoint a woman, the pressure to appoint an Hispanic. We look at somebody like Sonia Sotomayor, who is a Hispanic woman, a federal appeals judge. What are her chances" old Chuck?

TODD: Well, I think a lot of people look at them and they -- they seem to be pretty good. She's, uh, both... Uh, checks a lot of boxes on the academic front. She's, uh, been on the federal bench quite a bit, so she certainly has the qualifications. Uh, the background is very important. We heard President Obama as Candidate Obama talk about somebody who didn't necessarily grow up of privilege or grow up in the academic world, and so she does check all the correct boxes.

RUSH: So you see, it is exactly as I said at the top of the program: Judicial qualifications are not the primary concern. Empathy, feelings, identity politics. You gotta go get a woman, gotta go get a Hispanic woman. Now, this is the media speculation here. The media is attempting obviously to shape this, and we don't know to what extent the Obama White House has leaked, if anybody, Sonia Sotomayor's name. But you can see that clearly there's a steamroller effect here gathering for her nomination. And nobody's talking about her legal qualifications. That side's not. They're talking about the things that you notice about her when you look at her. She's a woman and she's an Hispanic, and somehow that's all you need to be qualified.

RUSH: Okay. So according now to the Obama administration, folks, we are now profiling candidates for the Supreme Court. They have to "check all the right boxes." That's what Chucker Todd said at NBC. That Sonia Sotomayor, why, she checks all the right boxes! We're seeking out certain races and sexes. Profiling is bad for law enforcement, but good for judicial selection. Maybe Chucker Todd can tell us when it's appropriate to use race and gender and when it's not. I guess it's perfectly fine for liberal Democrats to use race and gender, "make sure they check all the right boxes," in other words: profile. So profiling. This is what I meant. This is what I meant when I said, "The fun for me is going to be watching all these liberal groups go nuts advocating for the people they want Obama to pick."

And they're gonna go nuts on the basis of identity politics and profiling and all that. Remember when George W. Bush appointed Alberto Gonzales for attorney general, the first Hispanic ever. Alberto Gonzales was attacked. Bush got no credit for the appointment with the media. When Bush's father appointed the second black to the court, it was the same thing. It wasn't a real Hispanic, and Clarence Thomas wasn't an authentic black guy. So both Clarence Thomas and Alberto Gonzales were under attack from day one. But now, the Obama administration is profiling for Supreme Court nominations. Let's see what kind of scrutiny Obama's nominee gets. I can tell you, there won't be any scrutiny. What we're going to get is, "Why, this is the smartest woman," or smartest Hispanic, or smartest whatever they pick.

"Ever! This is the most qualified judge ever! Oliver Wendell Holmes is on third base compared to this person." It's just going to be the same hype that we got about Robert Gibbs, about how there's never, ever been a better press spokesman, press secretary than that idiot. It's going to be the same thing. There won't be any scrutiny. To give you an illustration, this happened today on Scarborough's show on PMSNBC. He was talking to Tavis Smiley. He's on PBS. He "checks all the boxes," too. Tavis Smiley is male, he's black, he's minority, and he works at PBS. So Tavis Smiley is a perfect guess for NBC. He checks all the boxes.

And Scarborough said to Tavis Smiley, Tavis, "Let's talk about identity politics. Thurgood Marshall replaced on the court by Clarence Thomas. Do you think that African-Americans deserve to have a justice on the court that represents the majority of their....?" Joe! Joe, please, say you didn't ask that, Joe. Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe. I don't care who the guest is. What are you doing? I love Joe Scarborough. Asking Tavis Smiley, "Do you think that African-Americans deserve to have a justice on the court that represents the majority of their...?" Joe, you've got a book coming out on conservatism, and you ask that? Anyway, here's what Tavis Smiley, which, again, perfect guest for MSNBC, he "checks all the boxes." He's black, he's minority, and works at PBS. Here's his answer.

SMILEY: I think that every president ought to consider how the court ought to be balanced. As an African-American I will sit and tell you that I do not agree with... There's almost nothing that Clarence Thomas has ruled on. I could think of one case where he ruled on in a cross-burning case which shocked the heck... I mean I almost went into full cardiac arrest when he came down on the right side of this cross-burning case.

SMILEY: But it was in fact a cross-burning case, and my thing is if you can't get that right, Justice Thomas. Having said that there is an African-American on the court and if identity politics go into play here this is not a Hispanic on the court. And I don't think you ought to, you know, pick and choose based upon ethnicity. But I think it is true, though, that we live now, Joe, in the most multicultural --

SMILEY: -- multiracial, multiethnic America ever, and that everybody in this great country deserves to see himself or herself represented --

RUSH: (laughing) That is just stupid. That is a perfect illustration of what the hell is wrong with the whole culture and the whole country. Tavis, your Clarence Thomas' remarks are just embarrassingly naive and ignorant. Asians don't have anybody in the court. I don't hear them complaining. Even beyond that, though, he says here, "I don't think we ought to do identity politics," and then goes on to lay out how we need to have virtually every... Folks, we've got so many mutts in this country now. There's been so much... I don't know how you do this. We're not just Asians anymore or white Americans. Everybody is something. We've all got so much... Whatever happened to the concept: We're all just Americans?

What about finding people with the best qualifications? This is, after all, the Supreme Court! Anybody ever found a logical reason to go out and find the best judge, the best candidate, the best American you can find? Now we're being told that it is not only okay, it is required that we profile, and in this opening, "We gotta get the female Hispanic on there. We gotta get the female." To listen to this stuff is just... I sit here and laugh about it, but it's a great illustration of what the left has done to our entire culture. Merit doesn't matter. Pandering to minorities is everything. Here's Obama. Now, this is July 18th, 2007. This is in Washington during the annual Planned Parenthood conference. Obama said this about the Supreme Court.

OBAMA JULY 2007: We need somebody who's got the empathy to recognize what it's like to be uh, a -- a -- a young teenaged mom. Uh, the empathy to understand what it's like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled.

RUSH: Well, this is two years ago, a year-and-a-half ago now. That's President Obama, before Planned Parenthood. We need somebody with empathy, that knows what it's like... This has nothing to do with legal cases. (interruption) Well, I'm sure we could find one, Snerdley. No, here's what we need. We need a teenaged single mother who is gay, who's a lesbian; who's dirt poor; African-American; and disabled. Or, if we can't find that person, we need a bigger Supreme Court. So... (sigh) I'm sure we can find in any blue city a poor minority teenaged mother who can barely get around. Disabled, lesbian, had the kid with surrogacy or artificial insemination. I'm sure you can find it. You know they're all over the place. You can find one. Whether they're qualified to be on the court doesn't matter. Because their qualifications, Obama just said what they are. Now, here he is again in Las Vegas. This is November 2007. And it's presidential -- Democrat presidential debate. Barack Obama and the moderator Wolf Blitzer have this exchange about the Supreme Court.

OBAMA NOVEMBER: Sometimes we're only looking at academics or people who have been in the courts. If we can find people who have life experience and they understand what it means to be on the outside, what it means to have the system not work for them, that's the kind of person I want --

RUSH: Fine. That means we can be get criminals, too. Obviously if you're a criminal, the system hasn't worked for you. (laughs) So we need to get lawbreakers. We need to add lawbreakers to the other lists of identities. Who's going to vet these people? You know, I'll tell you where we're going to get the next nominee, if it's not Sonia. I mean, Sonia Sotomayor may be good, but she doesn't fit all this stuff. She is sadly lacking in the qualifications Obama himself has laid out. It seems to me that to find the next Supreme Court justice or nominee, we're going to have to go to the Jerry Springer Show, and he's the guy that's going to vet them.

RUSH: What sound bite did I leave off with? We're up to number eight? So I left off with number seven. Play number seven again. Here's Barack Obama November 15th, 2007, Democrat debate, presidential debate, Wolf Blitzer and Obama have this exchange.

RUSH: And he also said he wants them to be poor. Clarence Thomas grew up poor, Mr. President, just to throw that in. By the way, Sonia Sotomayor is Puerto Rican. This is going to make the Mexicans and the Cubans angry. There will not be unity here on the Hispanic side. Sonia Sotomayor is Puerto Rican, and that's ignoring the Mexicans, and that's ignoring the Cubans. And, by the way, folks, since Obama says "what it means to be on the outside, what it means to have system not work for you," we gotta get an illegal alien on the Supreme Court. We need an illegal immigrant on the Supreme Court. They fit the definition of what it means to be on the outside, what it means to have the system not work for them. The court is looking at foreign law more and more. Shouldn't we have a representative from the United Nations on the Supreme Court? I find it curious, folks, I find it very, very curious that nobody has mentioned a Muslim or an Islamist. I mean, they live here, too. And they suffer, as we all know, vast discrimination. So what Obama's really looking for here, folks, what he really means with all these comments, he's looking for a radical who is a minority, who will use the court to advance Obama's political agenda. This is what it all boils down to.

If he's looking for a criminal, talk about a guy who checks all the boxes, Alcee Hastings. Black, former judge, impeached as a judge, now a member of Congress, he's a confirmed criminal. And criminals, you know, the system's not worked for them. We need a criminal. We need an illegal immigrant. We need a Muslim, Islamist; we need a single mother who is gay, very poor. I mean, these are the qualifications Obama is throwing out there. It's looking worse and worse for poor old Sonia Sotomayor as the day goes on here. She simply doesn't check enough boxes. Chuck Todd says she checks all the boxes, but as we listened to Obama describe his own qualifications, Sonia Sotomayor is a piker. Here. Let's go to May 11th, last year, CNN's Late Edition, Wolf Blitzer interviewing Obama, and Blitzer says, "Are there members or justices right now upon whom you would model, you would look at? Who do you do like?"

OBAMA: What I do want is a judge who is sympathetic enough to those who are on the outside, those who are vulnerable, those who are powerless, those who can't have access to political power, and as a consequence, can't protect themselves from being dealt with sometimes unfairly.

RUSH: He wants a judge sympathetic enough to those who are on the outside. Get Saul Alinsky. Just go resurrect Saul Alinsky. Exhume the body and nominate him because that's what this is, Rules for Radicals, put one of these clowns on the Supreme Court, and the more boxes you can check off on the identity politics side, the better. Now, I have a See, I Told You So here from my own program October 28th last year. This is what I said on this program about then-Senator Obama's philosophy of the Supreme Court.

RUSH ARCHIVE: You know legal justice is an entirely different thing than political and economic justice. And Obama wants the court to be concerned with economic justice. He wants legal cases that end up before federal courts, including the Supreme Court, he wants judges on those courts to look at economic and political aspects of the case, not the legal definition of justice, because the legal definition of justice is not what he's interested in -- economic justice, punishing achievers, labeling them guilty when they haven't done anything.

RUSH: Returning the nation's wealth to its, quote, unquote, rightful owners, and wherever he can advance that agenda, Supreme Court's a great place, these people end up for life there. So let's go back to 2001, Chicago FM radio station, the host interviewing state Senator Obama. And her question, "We're joined here by Barack Obama, Illinois state senator from the 13th District, senior lecturer in the law school, University of Chicago." And this is what Obama said about the redistribution of wealth.

OBAMA: If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court, I think where it succeeded was to invest formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples so that I would now have the right to vote, I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and -- and order and, as long as I could pay for it, I'd be okay, but the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in the society.

RUSH: There you have it. That's Barack Obama eight years ago in Chicago on an FM radio station, redistribution of wealth, economic justice. That's the court. That's what it's to be used for. In this next bite he's very upset, the Warren Court was not radical enough.

OBAMA: As radical as I think people tried to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn't that radical. It didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution, at least as it's been interpreted, and Warren Court interpreted it in the same way that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties, says what the states can't do to you, says what the federal government can't do to you, but it doesn't say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf, and that hasn't shifted, and one of the tragedies of the civil rights movement was because the civil rights movement became so court focused, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change. And in some ways we still suffer from that.

RUSH: So there you have it, his own words, and he's not changed. Redistribution of wealth, returning the wealth of the nation to its rightful owners, that's the purpose of judges, that's the purpose of courts. And here again, he talks about Al-Qaeda is not constrained by Constitution. Here he explains what that means. He feels constrained by a Constitution, series of negative rights. It says what the government can't do, what the government can't do, but the Constitution doesn't say what the government can do, and he wants to change that and he wants to have judges on the Supreme Court that are going to facilitate and implement his radical social agenda. It has nothing to do, per se, with justice, legal justice, or the law.

For example, "Peter A. Weinberg and Joseph R. Perella are part of a band of Wall Street renegades -- 'a small group of speculators,' President Obama called them Thursday -- who helped bankrupt Chrysler. That, anyway, is the Washington line. ... But now the two men, along with a handful of other financiers, are being blamed for precipitating the bankruptcy of an American icon. As Chrysler's fate hung in the balance Wednesday night, this group refused to bend to the Obama administration and accept steep losses on their investments while more junior investors, including the United Automobile Workers union, were offered favorable terms." I told you, explained all this yesterday. This is like how it's done in Argentina. The bondholders get the shaft, the banks get the shaft, and the union owns the company. "In a rare flash of anger, the president scolded the group Thursday as Chrysler, its options exhausted, filed for bankruptcy protection. 'I don't stand with those who held out when everyone else is making sacrifices,' Mr. Obama said. Chastened, and under intense pressure from the White House, the investment firm run by Mr. Weinberg and Mr. Perella, Perella Weinberg Partners, abruptly reversed course. In a terse statement issued shortly before 6 p.m. Thursday, Perella Weinberg Partners announced it would accept the government's terms."

Now, listen to this next passage in the New York Times. "Whatever the outcome, this bit of brinkmanship," on the part of these two guys, the hedge fund as they were called who wanted to hold out, they were being told to cash out at 20 cents on the dollar. Now, these people hold investments of average people. It's not these two guys single-handedly putting their own money into Chrysler and extending debt to Chrysler. It is people who invested with them. So it's not just these two guys that are going to lose; it's everybody who invested with them, and yet they are portrayed as the villains! "But whatever the outcome, this bit of brinkmanship -- which many characterized as a game of chicken with Washington -- has become yet another public relations disaster for Wall Street." How about a PR disaster for Chrysler? A public relations disaster for Wall Street. The only reason it's a PR disaster for Wall Street is because that's what President Obama wanted the perception to be by singling them out, tarring and feathering them publicly yesterday was unnecessary. He did not have to do it. President Obama had his little hissy fit.

Now, let me explain this, you get into finance and it gets convoluted, but it was clear that Obama favored the UAW at the expense of the bondholders. There's no question, 'cause they got 55% of the company, folks. He insisted that the bondholders settle for pennies on the dollar. The bondholders are the private sector here. Many of the bondholders, not all, but many of them were the big banks and these hedge funds, these Perella Weinberg Partners here that you've heard besmirched. The big banks went along with what Obama demanded, but the small majority of hedge funds did not. The bond holders committee representatives from Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Oppenheimer Funds, Perella Weinberg Partners, Zeron Funds, so forth and so on, the big banks went along, the hedge funds held out. And Obama accused them of holding out for a bailout. They were not holding out for a bailout, they were holding out for a proper return because they were carrying Chrysler debt.

So here's the money question. Did the big banks decide out of the goodness of their hearts to go along with Obama and settle for pennies on the dollar, or did they do it -- there's three possible reasons. They did it out of the goodness of their hearts; they did it because TARP money was sent to them under the table to cover their losses. We'll never know if that's the case, but it's a good bet. Maybe they didn't suffer losses. Maybe the big banks didn't really -- remember, those guys all voted for Obama. Public assumption is everybody took a bath and that's what makes the deal fair. Everybody sacrificed, except the UAW, Obama's real friends. The third possibility to explain why the big banks rolled over is they're just scared to death because the Obama administration, Treasury department, has their future in his hands. So, of the three possibilities, goodness of their hearts, they got secret slush money under the table from TARP, or they're scared to death because the Treasury department holds the future right in their hands. I vote option three. I vote that the big banks rolled over 'cause they're scared to death because wherever I go, I don't care who I interact with, they're scared to death of this administration.

There is genuine fear of the government from average Americans buying up guns and ammunition like they never have before, to people on Wall Street, to big businesses, there is abject fear. So I vote for number three. We'll never really know. What we do know is that Obama got angry at the holdouts. What we have here is a new Fairness Doctrine, the Obama Fairness Doctrine. Didn't need Congress, didn't need the courts for this. It's not about radio, it's about everything. Here's the scenario. Obama listens to all sides, and all sides end up thinking Obama understands and agrees with them. Obama, after listening to all sides, then plays Solomon and pronounces what's fair. And if you don't accept his fairness -- he-he-he -- you are dispatched to Messiah Park, not Fort Marcy Park, you are dispatched to Messiah Park. Sure, of course the listing is just an exercise. He's got his mind made up. He brings these people in the room just to do a snow job on them to make them think they've got a chance at changing his mind. That's why he had dinner with the conservative columnists. It's all for show; it's all PR. This guy is a committed ideological, liberal leftist who's putting on a show for everybody.

I told you in December the UAW was going to get this company and return the nation's wealth to its rightful owners. And this is exactly what's happened. But there are also consequences to leftism, liberal, when you do things. Here's a story out of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. It is a gold mine of information, actually pretty good reporting. It's by Angela Tablac. Angela, I don't want to ruin your career by praising you, I know that's a possibility here, but it's actually a good job of reporting. A quote from the story: "The thing Obama does not control yet is if the consumer buys their vehicles," meaning after all of this is done, the one thing that hasn't been taken into account in any of this, is there anybody who knows how to build a car now at Chrysler that people are gonna want to buy? And what we know is that the people Obama's put in charge here have never had that job, they've never had that responsibility from his car czar team to the union. But this story is about all of the unemployment that's going to happen in the St. Louis area as a result of the bankruptcy.

Obama's yesterday talking about all the jobs he saved. This story is about the plant closings in the St. Louis area and the jobs that are going to be lost. Chrysler plans to permanently close Fenton, Missouri's pickup assembly plant, there are two of them there, about a thousand people work there, and the mini-van plant. That was idle last year by the end of 2010 as a part of a broader plan to unload excess manufacturing facilities. For the second time in its 84-year history, Chrysler has hovered near bankruptcy. To help Chrysler, the federal government agreed to give it up to $8 billion in additional aid and to back its warranties. I'll tell you, that's something else. The bondholders, here's the government passing out $8 billion, and the bondholders, the ones that hold the legitimate debt, get none of it, they get the shaft 'cause they're Wall Street, and Obama loves the New York Times writing about this as another PR disaster for Wall Street. That's the nation's wealth.

The federal government in this deal also promised the UAW that it will protect workers, retiree health care benefits during the bankruptcy. The union gives up and sacrifices nothing, other than some of these jobs that are being lost, in St. Louis. They're not going to resolve the legacy costs. Nobody's intending to resolve the legacy costs. You mean the in perpetuity payment to people who have retired of health care benefits and pension? At some point it will be off-loaded and Obama will take it over at the federal government. But basically what you have here, the investment bankers stood up against a deal that shafts them royally. Obama went out and smeared them publicly, and they caved. And that's reported as a PR disaster for Wall Street. Now, since all of those who made out in the deal agree these guys are going to lose in court should they go, even those involved in negotiations see little upside in fighting. There's a zero chance this group will be able to get anything more in bankruptcy court, given that 90% of the lenders are lined up against them, the hedge fund people.

Washington Post: "Obama Vows Swift Overhaul As Chrysler Enters Bankruptcy." Negotiations dominated by banks who are at the mercy of government. That's option three as to why the big banks rolled over. So who owns the company at the end of the day? Says it right here. "The new majority owner will be Chrysler's union retiree health fund, which would receive a 55 percent stake in the new company. Fiat would get a 20 percent stake, with its share potentially rising to 35 percent over time based on performance. The United States would take 8 percent, while the Canadian government, which is also providing financing, would receive 2 percent." But Chrysler's UAW union retiree health fund is the proud new owner of Chrysler when this is all over at 55%. "Those negotiations had been dominated by four large banks that own 70 percent of Chrysler's debt -- Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, J.P. Morgan and Morgan Stanley. Each has received government bailout loans through the Treasury's Troubled Assets Relief Program." They said they'd be glad to cave 'cause their future is in the hands of Tim Geithner, Treasury department, and Barack Obama.

RUSH: This is George. You're up first on Open Line Friday. It's great to have you here, sir. Hello.

CALLER: Hey, you know what? This example of Obama and what he's doing with the Chrysler creditors is a perfect example of the cram-down that the senators just voted down. I mean, instead of having the court say to the banks, "You have to adjust the rates," now you have Obama basically saying, "I'm the judge and jury now. You creditors have to reduce the rates on Chrysler."

RUSH: Wait a minute. You're jumping the gun on something here. Let me tell people the story that you're talking about. The Senate yesterday "handed a victory to the banking industry on Thursday, defeating a Democratic proposal that would have given homeowners in financial trouble greater flexibility to renegotiate the terms of their mortgages." Essentially, the Senate yesterday refused to let judges fix mortgages in bankruptcy, which means that a contract is still a contract somewhere. Here's a quote from Senator Durbin of Illinois. Well, not a quote, but, "In recent weeks, major banks and bank trade associations worked closely with Senate Republicans to stop the measure. Twelve Democrats joined all the Republicans in voting against it." It was a cram-down-your throat policy that the Senate defeated. So your point about this again is what?

CALLER: That this is exactly what Obama was trying to do to the creditors like Oppenheimer of Chrysler. He was basically trying to force them, through fear, to reduce the debt on Chrysler -- which would have, like you said, brought the share up to 20 bucks.

CALLER: Well, exactly. And to your point about option number three, it's out of pure fear.

RUSH: Folks, a lot of these banks want to give the TARP money back, remember? And he won't take it back. Obama won't take the TARP money back. He wants in. These guys voted for him. In a way, it's sweet justice, except that the American private sector gets shafted again.

RUSH: Rod in Detroit. Hey, Rod. I learned something today that I didn't know. Dave Bing, the former NBA great, is going to run for mayor there.

CALLER: That is correct. He is running, although I'm not -- well, at least he's a guy that's got a little bit of experience and gumption. We won't even go there with respect to the former mayor.

RUSH: Well, yeah, I can understand that. Kevin Johnson, who I knew when he played for the Phoenix Suns, now the mayor of Sacramento, is going out there to help Bing in his mayoral campaign. Anyway, you didn't call about that. What was it you called about?

CALLER: Well, first, mega locomotive engineer dittos to you. This is a second-time call, and I'm most honored to speak to you. I wanted to talk to you, we have one American firm already making what I consider to be the world's highest quality, most fuel-efficient cars and trucks. My question to you, will the Chrysler bankruptcy, specifically Obama, the Obama administration's prop up and free transfer of this company to another loser company, Fiat, help spur a sales line of Ford Motor Company products? I was just wondering how you think Americans will respond to this overt attempt on the part of the Obama administration to prop up Chrysler.

RUSH: It's all going to depend on whether Chrysler makes cars people want to buy. It won't matter to people if Chrysler survives, however they survive. I mean people are not going to be ideological when they go in there. You might have some people that refuse to simply 'cause they're Obama people. If they make cars people want to buy, that ought to be the sole determining factor, and with the United Auto Workers pension fund owning 55%, I don't know who the car guys are at the United Auto Workers. There may be some guys in there that know how to design cars that are frustrated. You can find talent everywhere. Wherever they find it, whoever can design and build cars that people want. Problem is that Chrysler is going to be forever under the direction of Obama, and the Sierra Club is probably going to be the ones designing Chryslers, which means you're going to be buying lawn mowers and all that with a couple seats on them. It's tough. It's going to be very tough. Rod, thanks for the call.

[Like many of Obama’s dealings with business, he has to identify a bad guy so that the public can agree that this is the person who needs to lose the most money]

[This is why Chrysler needs to be in a bankruptcy court, rather than in the economic redistributive justice court of President Obama—a look at who these evil investors really are]:

When George W. Bush was in office, we heard constantly about the poisonous nature of American polarization. For example, Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg came out with a book arguing that "our nation's political landscape is now divided more deeply and more evenly than perhaps ever before." One can charitably say this was abject nonsense. Evenly divided? Maybe. But more deeply? Feh.

During the Civil War, the political landscape was so deeply divided that 600,000 Americans died. During the 1930s, labor strife and revolutionary ardor threatened the stability of the republic. In the 1960s, political assassinations, riots, and bombings punctuated our political discourse.

It says something about the relationship of liberals to political power that they can overlook domestic dissent when they're at the wheel. When the GOP is in office, America is seen as hopelessly divided because dissent is the highest form of patriotism. When Democrats are in charge, the Frank Riches suddenly declare the culture war over and dismiss dissent as the scary work of the sort of cranks Obama's Department of Homeland Security needs to monitor.

This is quite fascinating, the idea of giving the auto companies over to the unions. Let’s just lay aside that this is as dishonest as the government taking your house away from you and giving it to a non-working welfare family who need a house. If the union runs the auto company, there are two important considerations: (1) If you recall Communism ideology, this is it—putting ownership of the means of production into the hands of the people. (2) We will now have a free and regular flow of money (probably) from government to a huge company run by union bosses. Do they milk the government for all it is worth, killing GM slowly, or do they steal everything they can, knowing that this will all stop in 3.7 years? Those are my comments; but a related (and excellent) article:

Obama’s first 100 days from a national security stand (heritage.org is a great organization):

So, do you remember all of the hoo hah about Sarah Palin and her outfits, and how, not only was this blown way out of proportion, but the facts were mostly distorted. Most people thought that she was the small town girl who was cut loose in some huge department store, with an unlimited budget and told to go for it. Nothing could be further from the truth. But, what we will not hear about? Michelle Obama wearing $540 tennis shoes to a feeding the poor event. “They’re just shoes; get over it.” My problem? Just look at these shoes. She got ripped off.

Conservative Review
Issue #73	Kukis Digests and Opines on this Week’s News and Views	May 3, 2009