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 try to, in this one ezeen, to give you all of the political, economic and national events and opinions essential to this past week; and I will include several stories on international affairs (although I am not as thorough in this area).

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.

Ahmadinejad was elected as Iran’s leader, supposedly by a landslide (however, it ought to be pointed out that he did not get 100% of the vote that Saddam Hussein got). 1000's of protestors are in Iran’s streets, which is quite rare.

Carrie Prejean is stripped of her title of Miss California, the Miss USA runner up, a few weeks after Donald Trump said that she would continue as Miss USA.

The house passes a cash for clunkers bill which gives a $3500 or $4500 credit to turn in your car to buy a new car which gets better gas mileage.

This week, the Obama administration has transferred 10 detainees out of our detention facility in Guantanamo. Two were sent to Chad and Iraq, one was brought to New York to stand trial in civilian court, four were sent to Bermuda and three to Saudi Arabia. These are the easier ones; there are 229 to go. There was money involved, although I am having trouble finding the exact figures. In any case, this effort, which is opposed by a majority of the American people, is going to cost us millions of dollars.

The remote Pacific island nation of Palau said Wednesday it has agreed to a U.S. request to temporarily resettle up to 17 Chinese Muslims, which will cost the United States $200 million.

It has come out that some captured terrorists are being read Miranda rights. It is unclear as to whether this may even predate the Obama administration.

White supremacist James von Brunn was charged with the murder of U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum security officer Stephen Johns.

Obama proposals fiscal responsibility and paygo, where, in order to authorize any new programs, money must be cut from another program (ha!) or taxes raised to cover the cost of the new program. Of course, this will not include the stimulus bill, the newest budget, TARP funds or any big ticket items.

In Los Angeles, in a state which is going broke, free STD kits are being sent out in the mail. Apparently, this is to say clinics money. Californians, just think of it as an investment.

President Obama hired a pay czar, who will regulate executive pay of those who got bailouts from the government.

David Letterman spoke of Sarah Palin’s slutty flight attendant look, and later remarked how her daughter, at a baseball game they both attended, was impregnated by a player during the 7^th inning. When Letterman heard that it was Palin’s 14-year-old at the game, his apology was that, he meant her of-age daughter. On the short term, Letterman got higher ratings.

Last week I was just musing about an appellant court deciding that, some cases should not be decided by them. The Supreme Court this week declined to hear arguments on Don’t ask, don’t tell.

“If raising taxes worked, then New York and California would have balanced budgets.” Newt Gingrich.

"It helps to be where the money is," said Mark Warner, Democratic Senator from Virginia, commenting on how well Washington D.C. is fairing during this nationwide economic downturn.

The "Transformers" bombshell-cum-uninhibited philosophizer Megan Fox also contemplates - reluctantly - what she would say to Megatron to keep him from destroying the world. "I'd barter with him," she muses to the July issue Total Film UK, "and say instead of the entire planet, can you just take out all of the white trash, hillbilly, anti-gay, super bible-beating people in Middle America?" Where is the love and the unity?

North Korea vowed Saturday to step up its atomic bomb-making program and threatened war if its ships are stopped as part of new U.N. sanctions aimed at punishing the nation for its latest nuclear test. Perhaps, Obama made the mistake of not sending a reset button to Ahmadinejad?

We are severely limited as to how much economic pressure we can put on North Korea. They will allow hundreds of thousands of their own citizens to die of starvation and privation; they have already done it. These leaders are inhuman and evil.

Charles Krauthammer receives the Eric Breindel award, and this is quite inspiring (Charles covers several different topics):

Kimjongilia, the movie; click on the trailer at the top of the page; it is not clearly explained, but my understanding is, those who are speaking have spent time in North Korean prison camps (the intro is not the same as the trailer):

This is another new film, 33 Minutes; and this is a trailer for it (the is the name of the film, not the length of the trailer). 33 minutes is the length of time for a missile with a nuclear warhead to reach the United States.

Newt Gingrich’s speech at the GOP Congressional dinner (this is outstanding, but it is nearly an hour):

In case you have not seen it, here is Evan Thomas calling Obama god (and Chris Matthew’s speaks of Obama delivering us from evil):

From a couple weeks ago, Glenn Beck interviews Thomas Sowell; they cover a lot of ground:

I discovered this when trying to find a particular Krauthammer vid; if you think there the key to Israel and Palestine conflict is a 2-state solution, you need to see this:

1) Carrie Prejean, former Miss California, stripped of her title this week, and former runner-up to Miss USA, has been a fascinating study of the media. First of all, the media is not known for shying away from salacious material, so when one of the directors of Miss California, Keith Lewis, revealed that she had breast implants, provided to her by the Miss California organization, I have a few questions. I was surprised that the press had none of these questions. First of all, Carrie Prejean, although she is a talkative woman, probably would not answer these questions, but Keith Lewis seems happy to talk to anyone who will listen. How many Miss California’s get free breast enhancement surgery? Did Carrie get this before or after she was named Miss California? Is this a freebie which is available to the top contestants of Miss California? Who knew about this? How do the contestants find out about it? How do other Miss Whatever State deal with this issue? Is it an unspoken rule that, if the state can afford the surgery, that it is fair to give their best girls that surgery? Is this controversial? Have there been heated arguments over this, say posed by the less-well endowed states (financially speaking)? I would hope that these would be questions that almost any normal male reporter would have. I am sure that a cover story in Time or Newsweek on this topic would actually do well. Who gets them and who doesn’t? might be the title on the front cover. Am I the only person who has these questions? Should I seek therapy because of this?

2) What appear to be the facts, are as follows: the Miss California organization sent Carrie apparently a number of suggested activities that she go to, including attending the premier screening of a film on gay marriage by gay marriage advocates. It was suggested that she pose for Playboy (this appears to have come from the Miss California organization). These appearances, according to Keith Lewis, would not have been activities in which Carrie Prejean would have appeared in an official capacity. This makes me wonder, why is the Miss California organization sending such suggestions her way? She has a lawyer, she probably has people; and such non-Miss California activities, it seems to me, ought not to come from the Miss California organization. Were there things that Carrie Prejean was expected to do that she did not? Keith Lewis says that there were, but, at least up until this point in time, has not specifically laid them out (although he has been asked this direct question on at least 2 occasions). Although some in the politically correct camps have said, “This is just a he said, she said” it does not take a genius to listen to both sides, and figure out who has an agenda here. It seems like it would be easy to flood Carrie Prejean’s email with offers and suggestions, far more than any one person could do, including stuff that it is obvious that she would not do, and then claim that this is a problem. Any organizer could come up with 50 things, half of which are reasonable, for Miss California to do, and when only one or two of them are done, then claim breach of contract.

3) Many people who gave to the marriage amendment in California, had their personal addresses published on the internet. There is a Catholic Bishop who has been outspoken about traditional marriage (he believes in it), and his personal address has been put on the internet, along with the addresses of properties which he owns. These gay marriage advocates know that, there just might be someone, out there on the fringe, all worked up over this gay marriage thing, and it not passing, and having access to the home address of someone who supports traditional marriage or believes that homosexual actions are sinful, might lead someone on the far, far left to act violently or mischievously against these people. Or, at the very least, here is an address where you can send hate mail and mail with questionable material in the envelopes and packages. This is dirty. This is not having a difference of opinion, and saying, “We are Americans, so we can disagree on this issue. You side won, but we will champion our side next election.” That is how political disagreements ought to be here in the United States. The fact that this group, in particular, will go to these lengths is telling. When one side of any political issue preaches retribution, personally, I would shy away from them.

4) Like most people, I figured, in my naivete, the gays wanted civil unions, and that was their end game. At that point in time, I really did not examine their arguments that carefully, and did not really give the issue much thought. Now, that every gay has the right to have a civil union, all of a sudden, that is merely one step, and that it appears, to those who are naive, that the end game is gay marriage. If you doubt me when I tell you, this is not the end game, then go attend a gay pride parade—wear a disguise if you feel it necessary—and notice what sort of activity that occurs right in public, in the parade. This is—how should I put it?—in your face gayness, to a point where most straights are very uncomfortable with what they witness in a gay parade on a public street. Imagine this sort of in-your-face gayness in the public schools—including grammar school—because that is where this is all going. I am not saying, grammar school children are going to be made to watch gay pride parades. I am saying, there will be an exposure to our very young people of sexuality, which will, at a very young age, even challenge them to think about their own gayness or straightness. The most important thing for you to know is this: once there is gay marriage throughout the United States, the things which follow in our schools will come about as a matter of judicial law and hand-to-hand activism—there will be no voting on what happens in the public school. And if you oppose this, you will be branded a homophobe and someone who does not recognize the civil rights of fellow citizens.

5) Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin took her 14-year-old daughter to a charity event in New York City, and then took her to a Yankees game. David Letterman, soon thereafter, in his routines, spoke of Palin’s slutty flight attendant, and, in the monologue, Letterman joked that during Palin's recent New York visit that "during the seventh inning, her daughter was knocked up by Alex Rodriguez." Letterman gave a half-hearted apology on air, which he essentially turned into a bit, and justified his joke, by saying the joke was about Palin’s now 18-year old daughter (who was not at the game) and not about her 14-year old daughter. There was a way to apologize about this and a way not to. Letterman turned it into a joke. Several months ago, Don Imus made an unscripted remark about some female college basketball players, calling them nappy-headed ho’s. Imus was castigated for this remark, and lost his job over it. His apology was unequivocal. He made it publically and privately, and the outrage continued nonetheless, until his employer fired him. Although there is outrage on the right, there is very little about this elsewhere (although it will eventually filter its way into the news). Letterman did invite the Palin’s on the air to his show (he would get big ratings, and he knows it).

6) I am not, generally speaking, an angry person, or a violent individual. If I was Todd Palin, I would probably take Letterman up on the offer. I would show up to the show, go through all of the niceties and the pre-interview, and make as nice as can be. Then I would come onto the set, alone, without Sarah Palin, and sit down to talk to Dave. And, at my first opportunity, I would reach across Letterman’s desk, grab him by the shirt collar and tie, and pull him up close, and demand a real apology or else. Palin: “I want you to imagine that someone made similar remarks about your wife and about your child, and then I want you to give the apology you would expect to receive. I want you to direct your apology to my wife and my two daughters. Otherwise, I am going to punch you in face a few times, on national television, until your crew runs out to save you.” I can dream, right? On the negative side, it would be too big of a boost to Letterman’s ratings.

7) According to a 65-year-old caller from Montreal to the Bill Bennett show, there are only 2 places in Montreal where you can get an MRI (Montreal has approximately 3 million people). By contrast, most hospitals in the US have 2 MRI machines in the hospital itself. 48 hours to wait in the emergency room is not unusual. Dying while on a waiting list for this or that treatment is common for serious conditions. 50% of Canada’s budget now goes to health care. Doctors are told how many patients they can see, and they are paid for that amount. The doctor of this particular patient died, so she is unable, at 65, with several health problems, to find a new doctor in Montreal. Government-run health care means rationing.

8) When Bush was president, we saw night after night on network news, this or that explosion or attack in Iraq. The typical explanation was, if it bleeds, it leads. So, the news was not out to hurt our war efforts by showing death and destruction every chance it got; it was simply giving us the bloody news. Now that Obama is president, there are still deaths going on in Iraq. There is still the mounting death toll. There are still explosions. However, for some reason, if it bleeds, it leads is no longer cited, because, we often do not see what is going on in Iraq any more.

9) It is fundamentally unfair for any government-run enterprise to be competing in the free market. They make the laws and they can infuse this business with as much cash as they want.

10) Although Reverend Jeremiah Wright complained that “Those Jews aren’t going to let me talk to” Obama, on the same day a security guard at the Holocaust Museum in New York was killed by a Jew-hating racist, James von Brunn, many commentators tried to draw some sort of a straight-line between conservatives and this murdering racist (ignoring the fact that many of his proposed targets were conservative entities); but none tried to tie Wright’s anti-Semitic remarks to Brunn.

11) Although Obama fiercely spoke out against attacks against his wife (even though she was daily on the campaign trail speaking on his behalf), he has never suggested that evil remarks made about the Palin children are out of line (S. E. Cupp made this observation).

12) ACORN, and about 240 other organizations, are all located in the same building in New Orleans, and all seem to be interrelated, and all seem to feed into and feed from a private organization CCI. Because CCI is a private organization, it does not have to open its books as would most publically-funded organizations. According to one ACORN official, this was simply the previous location of ACORN, and they are in another building in New Orleans. However, even though this place remains locked up, there are some ACORN employees and others who go in and out of this building. This is the same ACORN which is implicated in voter fraud in 15 different states in the previous election. Now, personally, I do not believe that organizations involved with any sort of political movement ought to be receiving federal or state funds. It is doubly worse when these organizations are not above board and transparent.

13) Government is essentially running GM now, regardless of what they say publically. It is fundamentally unfair for government to put itself out there as a player in the free market, as they can make up whatever rules they want and throw more money at their organization. Have you ever heard of Amtrak? It was supposed to be a profitable venture by the government, but costs the taxpayers money every year. To give you an idea as to what government can do: (1) in the past, government made it possible for people with crappy credit and no proof of income to buy houses, which led to our current crisis. Recently, government is now giving an $8000 tax credit to those who buy a house; and $3500–4500 to those who turn in their gas-guzzlers to buy a new, more efficient vehicle. How can you compete with that, when Congress can just make up new rules, which has nothing to do with regulating business in order to make it honest?

14) Observation of FoxNews: over the past 40 years or so, we have had every possible permutation of liberal and conservative in the White House and in Israel. The anger of the Palestinians has never been quelled. The have been offered a 2-state solution and they rejected it already. Maybe, just maybe, it is not a problem with the US president or with Israel.

15) Rush and I must be on the same wavelength again. Early this week, I decided to slip in a bit about determining who the Republican leader is right now is silly, and I was tired of hearing about it. 2 years ago, there was no Democratic leader; 3 years ago, there was no Democratic leader. Nor was there obsession will determining who the Democratic leader was. The party out of power does not have a party leader. There are simply voices from the party. Rush said essentially the same thing this week.

16) The government looking at expanding a pioneering scheme in Flint, one of the poorest US cities, which involves razing entire housing districts and returning the land to nature. "Decline is a fact of life in Flint. Resisting it,” said Mr Kildee, who pioneered this concept, “is like resisting gravity." This makes so much more sense than free enterprise and lower taxes. Of course it does. Look, all they have to do, is cut local government spending by 50%, roll back taxes, and open up Flint to free enterprise (e.g. building those outhouse-sized nuclear reactors). It could change things overnight.

17) Am I the only person who is sick of Sean Hannity asking every Republican leader, “Are you running for president” 3 years in advance? Give it a rest, Hannity.

18) Obama complained the Bush just kicked GM down the road, and he did. However, Obama did essentially the same thing, giving them billions of dollars first, and then keeping GM out of the traditional bankruptcy system so that he could payback the unions which voted for him.

19) Steve Hayes of the Fox Panel points out that, even though Obama and his talking heads repeatedly tell us that the Stimulus bill will save or create 600,000 jobs, they are unable to tell us how much stimulus money will be spent in the next 100 days. Krauthammer calls this a mathematical fantasia.

20) I think I have heard this argument posed by 2 other people (I don’t recall who): about 10–15% of the U.S. population is without health insurance. So, is the correct solution to revamp the entire system to deal with this 10–15%? Remember, a public health care option will eventually overtake all private companies. I hope that some of you are beginning to understand, it does not matter what Obama says (he says he does not want to eliminate private health insurance)—look at what he does.

21) Since the government makes the laws on health insurance and since they have an unending bucket of money to fund their programs (whether these programs work or not), any government-run health insurance will eventually wipe out all private insurance.

22) Rush points out that, if Sarah Palin wore some of the clothes Michelle Obama has worn, we would never hear the end of it.

$17,000 is the average amount of federal government aide to each household, apart from the federal free breakfast and lunch program.

Under Bush, 20% of the taxpayers paid 80% of the taxes and 40% paid no federal income tax. Under Obama, 20% of the taxpayers now pay 90% of the taxes, 50% pay no taxes, and the budget deficits by all measures (as a percentage of GDP, as a percentage of the budget) are far greater than we have ever seen before.

President Obama’s proposed budget will permanently hike annual federal spending from $25,000 per household to more than $32,000 per household.

California corporate tax revenues are down 50% in May and income tax revenues are down 34%.

Amtrak lost $1.6 billion last year. Do you really think our government is able to handle health care if the cannot run a passenger trains system?

So that we can compare consecutive months, these are the stats for the Month of May:

51% of Americans favor an across-the-board tax cut for all Americans to stimulate the U.S. economy

During Election 2008, then-candidate Obama promised to cut taxes for 95% of all Americans. So far, just 26% of adults believe President Obama has delivered on that promise. Forty-three percent (43%) say he has not and 31% are not sure

Is your news source still doing stories about how dead the Republican party is or, who best represents the Republican party? I bet these were not among your headlines.

Pew Study found that stories on the killing of George Tiller ran 10 to 1 to those on the murder of Private William Long.

Obama talks about fiscal responsibility, and then takes questions from reporters. This could be golden.

Obama, on fiscal responsibility: "The reckless fiscal policies of the past have left us in a very deep hole. Digging our way out will take time and patience and tough choices." This is after a stimulus bill which wasn’t; after a budget which, in one year, tripled Bush’s deficit; and presently, Obama is proposing more government participation in healthcare, as well as cap and trade legislation, both of which will bankrupt us further, and which Obama speaks of as investments.

ACORN is closely related to several dozen other organizations which receive federal taxpayer dollars. How many people in the Obama administration have been members of any of these organizations? Could you release a list of names and organization affiliations within the week?

Why did GM not go through the traditional bankruptcy process? Why do you have someone dismantling GM who knows nothing about cars? Why is the new government-appointed CEO of GM not a car man?

If you don’t think a government-run health carte system is the end game of liberal Democrats.

When it came to gas, the breaking point was around $4/gallon (it got nearly as high as $5/gallon in some places). I believe that there is a breaking point when it comes to unemployment. Right now, Obama enjoys a very high favorability rating, even though his policies are rated low (he is at 60% and above for favorability, but the stimulus, for instance, has a plurality of Americans who want it repealed). I think that the magic number for unemployment will be 10%, although I don’t think that will be front page news. That is, when we hit 10% unemployment, it will not be a banner headline in Obama newspapers. It won’t be like the number of dead soldiers in Iraq (by the way, what happened to those statistics?).

People will find out that our unemployment has reached 10% (some news agencies will let the cat out of the bag), and suddenly, this Obama love affair will end (not with the press, but with the people). I said suddenly. If the 10% unemployment becomes known when it happens, far and wide, then Obama’s drop in popularity would be sudden. However, it will take place, and I think that, whenever the population as a whole realizes it, they are going to look at Obama in a different light. I think that a slide below 50% is quite likely, when our unemployment gets to 10%.

When Bush was president, we saw all of the bad news coming out or Iraq and Afghanistan was virtually ignored by the news (as, somehow, this was seen as the good war). For years, our soldiers have done great positive things in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Look for puff pieces on these two countries, especially as the 2010 and 2012 elections near.

From Karl Rove: the deficit this year will near $2 trillion (since the previous estimates were based on rosy numbers).

Despite getting some early higher ratings, Letterman will lose 10–20% of his viewers over the Palin remarks.

Here is a simple one: Obama touted how his little speech really got the debate stirred up in Iran. However, he is not going to suggest that his speech failed in any way, simply because Ahmadinejad was elected.

Negative news on Iraq is not a common, nightly occurrence any more in the network news media. Even though there are still spectacular explosions there, that no longer leads the news night after night.

Rush Limbaugh, on a number of occasions, has said that Obama wants chaos, and in this chaos, he can push through whatever programs that he wants (if I am understanding Rush correctly).

I think the lousy economy is simply because Obama has no idea what he is doing. He became the most novice president that we have ever had. I think that he would like for the economy to show real signs of growth. I think that he believes that many of his ideas should work. The problem is, neither he, nor anyone on his staff, to the best of my knowledge, are really businessmen. They have not been entrepreneurs. Some may have studied economics and some may have even worked in the private sector and on Wall Street, but they really do not have a divergent understanding of economics. I would guess that most of Obama’s economic team either believe in Keynesian economics or have some sort of distorted view, but I doubt that any of them believe strongly in supply-side economics.

From what I can gather, Obama would like to even things out somewhat. He doesn’t want to destroy the wealthy, but those who make an obscene amount of wealth, need to (in his opinion) contribute some of their money to those on the lower end of the scale. If the money on the very top, could be taken to those at the very bottom, so that they could buy new couches, new fuel efficient cars, etc., Obama thinks (again, my guess), that things will really be better and the economy will improve.

Part of the far left believes in economic justice. They believe that there is just so much money out there, and that the rich have made their money on the backs of the poor. It would be economically just for this excessive wealth to be taken from the very wealthy and given to the very poor. This is economic justice, and Obama seems to think that this is true justice (recall his accidental revealing statement about spreading the wealth around, and all of the subsequent attacks against the person who asked him the question which elicited that damaging answer).

When Barack Obama decided that questions from the German press about his trip agenda in that country were too pesky, he told the reporters, "So, stop it all of you!" He just wanted them to ask things he wanted to talk about. Well, what politico wouldn't want that?

And according to a new Pew Research Center poll, we are behaving...like fans. On domestic press, it showed that "President Barack Obama has enjoyed substantially more positive media coverage than either Bill Clinton or George W. Bush during their first months in the White House" with "roughly twice as much" Obama coverage about his "personal or leadership qualities" than was the case for either previous president.

Back in the US, NBC's Brian Williams' two-part "Living Large With the Top Dog" feature on Mr. Obama's life included a plug for Conan O'Brien's new show and mention of cable talkies where Mr. Obama only cited MSNBC personalities. Accident? I don't think so. There were a few probing moments in there, but they were overshadowed by the flash of hanging out in the back of the Auto One limo and having burgers. A little navel-gazing among journalism standards hall monitors about whether the thing had been too soft came and went.

Then, this Sunday in the NYTimes, there was full-on chick-flick swooning over Barack and Michelle Obama's heavily scented "date night" in NY City and its high bar standard effect on our relationship culture, with just a hint of controversy over the taxpayer costs to add some spice. I swear I've seen this movie, only Michael Douglas was the President. Or Harrison Ford. Or one of those cool and languid characters you'd want to like you. George Bush needed to be beer-bar likable to get elected. His successor has managed to get a lot of people to want to be liked by him.

And in Paris, Mr. Obama talked about how he'd love to take his wife for a romantic tour of the City of Lovers, but couldn't. Then he did. I'm guessing some regular-Joe freedom fries weren't on the menu.

You can't blame powerful people for wanting to play the press to peddle self-perpetuating mythology. But you can blame the press, already suffocating under a massive pile of blame, guilt, heavy debt and sinking fortunes, for being played. Some of the time, it seems we're even enthusiastically jumping into the pond without even being pushed. Is there an actual limit to the number of instances you can be the cover of Newsweek?

If I wanted to see highly manicured image management I'd just take some No-Doz and read Gavin Newsom's tweets. But the Obama-press dance is a more consensual seduction where, in the old-fashioned sense, we're the girl. (In California, there's no other option.)

I thought that the Maxfield Parrish, heroic days of the Kennedy Administration PR, where the press and the president were pretty much all in on the same screenplay and the same jokes, couldn't happen in our modern era, what with paparazzi and tabloids and talk shows, citizen sound-bite scavengers and voracious 24/7 news cycles. But now that the stumbling Bushes and smirking Clintons are out of the White House, time has compressed back on itself like the machine in the Denzel Washington movie, "Deja Vu." It's the early 1960s and Camelot all over again:

Very attractive wife, cute, precocious kids and the hopes and dreams of at least 63 percent of the population sitting on the athletic shoulders of a young, charismatic, mold-breaking leader, Blah, blah. (Oh, and a Chicago Mayor Richard Daley helped make it possible. We can play the Lincoln-Kennedy parallels game here.) Only there's a puppy now instead of a pony and it seems like Barack Obama may be less socially, self-destructively libertine than Mr. Kennedy. In fact, he's downright conservative on things like same-sex marriage. (It's smart to have a wholesome life -- though very clearly, in the sinuous world of the Obamas, not to the point of abstinence -- when you're pushing programs that get labeled as socialist.)

So we're in love, lust, or just a whole lot of like. Clearly we get something in exchange, whether it's a little reflected exuberance, a sense of history or just some very minor role in a fun movie. If you want to appear in a movie with John Travolta, you go willingly with him to the LA Scientology Center and are happy about it. "I'm clear, man. Hand me the cans."

I'm not sure Mr. Obama is necessarily getting away with anything here. In Cairo, when he spoke of the "principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings," more than a few writers pointed out that this meant unless you're the Egyptian government or two gay people wanting to get married. What the President was saying overseas, to mostly purplish commentators' delight over the symbolic significance of the event, Dick Cheney was actually meaning in his own "freedom means freedom for everyone" speech about same-sex weddings.

The style-over-substance hit followed him from continent to continent. "While the president is popular among Europeans," the Wall Street Journal wrote, "he returned from his second trip to Europe with little more progress on key issues" than he got on his first visit. That's the Journal. But the Washington Post, where the John Kennedy myth was nurtured like a golden statue, managed a cautionary op-ed column from Robert Samuelson warning that "our political system works best when a president faces checks on his power." He meant checks from the press.

Samuelson was one of the few in the media to give some room to the Pew Research Center poll.

So far, this is all about image and character and press "opportunities." But with what CNN medical reporter Elizabeth Cohen called this morning "gazillions of dollars" of our money at stake and crazy people with nukes bristling from around the edges of the world, we can't afford not to keep a closer eye on the substance thing.

IAN KELLY, STATE DEPARTMENT SPOKESMAN: We understand that there are some concerns about some of the details of the resettlement, and we're confident that we can work - work these things through with the government of the U.K.

CHRIS WALLACE, FOX HOST: That was the State Department doing some damage control after it apparently forgot to tell the British it had struck a deal to relocate some Chinese Muslim detainees in Bermuda. It's all part of the Obama administration's effort to unload Gitmo inmates, wherever it can.

So let's - and you need a program to keep track of this. Four Uighers to Bermuda, the remaining 13 to Palau. Is this, Charles, a sensible way for dealing with them and, possibly, a model for dispersing - dispensing with all the Guantanamo, or at least most of the Guantanamo detainees?

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: Well, it certainly has an element of comedy about it. You can see the new al Qaeda slogan, "Join al Qaeda, see the world."

It's win-win. If al Qaeda defeats the United States, you rule the world out of Mecca. If you lose, you end up on a tropical island, Bermuda shorts, holding a daiquiri in your hand.

Look, the Uighers are the easiest of the issues. It's hard to get excited about the Uighers, because they're like the Basques or the IRA. They are terrorists, but they're not particularly anti-American. They're ambitious...

KRAUTHAMMER: I'm not sure how - you know, how much that will change them. Their interest is in the western elements of China, which are Muslim, and liberating it.

Their ambitions are geographically circumscribed, so getting them out of Guantanamo is reasonably easy. And yet we had to shop around to 100 countries who said no, and they end up on these island dependencies in the middle of nowhere.

The real issue is going to be the Yemenis, who the Saudis have hinted they may take, but the Saudis have a record of releasing people who end up at war with us again.

And the insoluble issue is the ones who are not tryable and not releasable, who are going to be stuck in Guantanamo with nobody in the U.S. taking them.

At last, there is convincing evidence that Obama's poll numbers may be descending to earth. While his approval remains high - and his personal favorability is even higher - the underlying numbers suggest that a decline may be in the offing. Even as he stands on his pedestal, the numbers under his feet are crumbling.

According to a Rasmussen poll, more voters now trust Republicans more than Democrats to handle the economy, by a margin of 45-39. Scott Rasmussen notes that "this is the first time in over two years of polling that the GOP has held the advantage on this issue." Last month, he had the Democrats holding a one-point lead, but they lost it in June's polling.

And the Democratic leads over Republicans on their core issues are also dropping. Particularly interesting is the Democratic decline over healthcare, from an 18-point lead in May to only 10 points now.

A Gallup poll also confirms that the president's personal ratings are high, but the underlying data less so. While 67 percent of voters give Obama personal favorable ratings and 61 percent approve of his job performance (Rasmussen has his job approval lower, at 55 percent), they give him much lower ratings on specific issues.

Gallup shows Obama getting only 55 percent approval on his handling of the economy (down from 59 percent in February) and finds that only 45 percent approve of his handling of federal spending while 46 percent approve of his treatment of the budget deficit.

As it becomes clearer that the deficit caused by spending has landed us in a new economic crisis, entirely of Obama's own making, his popularity and job performance are likely to drop as well.

The old recession - that the public says was caused by Bush - shows signs of winding down. But the new recession and/or inflation - triggered by Obama's massive deficits - is just now coming upon us.

If Obama refuses to cut back on his spending/stimulus plans (despite convincing evidence that Americans are not spending the money), he has three options:

c) He can pay more interest to borrow money, which will send the economy diving down again.

The blame for these outcomes will fall squarely on Obama's deficit and spending policies. The fact that Americans are aware of these issues, and already disapprove of Obama's performance on them, indicates that they will be increasingly receptive to blaming him for the "new" recession.

Interestingly, Obama's polling is now the exact opposite of President Clinton's in the days after Monica Lewinsky. Back then, the president's approval for handling specific issues was his forte, while his job approval remained high but his personal favorability lagged 20 points behind. Ultimately, it is a politician's performance on specific issues that determines his electability. Personal favorability withers in the face of issue differences. Obama is about to find out that you cannot rely on image to bolster your presidency when the underlying issues are crumbling.

All this data suggests that Obama might run out of steam just as he gets to his healthcare agenda. As unemployment mounts, month after month, and Obama's claims of job creation (or savings) ring hollow, it is possible that he will not have the heft to pass his radical restructuring of the healthcare system. The automaton Democratic majority may pass it anyway, but it will be a one-way ticket to oblivion if they do.

There is a new consensus on gay marriage: not on whether it should be legalized but about the motives of those of us who oppose it. All agree that any and all opposition to gay marriage is explained either by biblical literalism or anti-homosexual bigotry. This consensus is brilliantly constructed to be so unflattering to those of us who will vote against gay marriage--if we are allowed to do so--that even biblical literalists and bigots are scrambling out of the trenches and throwing down their weapons.

But I think that the fundamental objection to gay marriage among most who oppose it has very little to do with one's feelings about the nature of homosexuality or what the Bible has to say about sodomy. The obstacle to wanting gay marriage is instead how we use and depend on marriage itself--and how little marriage, understood completely, affects or is relevant to gay people in love. Gay marriage is not so much wrong as unnecessary. But if it comes about, it will not be gay marriage that causes the harm I fear, as what will succeed its inevitable failure.

The embrace of homosexuality in Western culture has come about with unbelievable speed--far more rapidly than the feminist revolution or racial equality. Less than 50 years ago same-sex sexual intercourse was criminal. Now we are arguing about the term used to describe a committed relationship. Is the right to marry merely lagging behind the pace with which gays have attained the right to hold jobs--even as teachers

and members of the clergy; to become elected officials, secret agents, and adoptive parents; and to live together in public, long-term relationships? And is the public, having accepted so rapidly all these rights that have made gays not just "free" but our neighbors, simply withholding this final right thanks to a stubborn residue of bigotry? I don't think so.

When a gay man becomes a professor or a gay woman becomes a police officer, he or she performs the same job as a heterosexual. But there is a difference between a married couple and a same-sex couple in a long-term relationship. The difference is not in the nature of their relationship, not in the fact that lovemaking between men and women is, as the Catholics say, open to life. The difference is between the duties that marriage imposes on married people--not rights, but rather onerous obligations--which do not apply to same-sex love.

The relationship between a same-sex couple, though it involves the enviable joy of living forever with one's soulmate, loyalty, fidelity, warmth, a happy home, shopping, and parenting, is not the same as marriage between a man and a woman, though they enjoy exactly the same cozy virtues. These qualities are awfully nice, but they are emphatically not what marriage fosters, and, even when they do exist, are only a small part of why marriage evolved and what it does.

The entity known as "gay marriage" only aspires to replicate a very limited, very modern, and very culture-bound version of marriage. Gay advocates have chosen wisely in this. They are replicating what we might call the "romantic marriage," a kind of marriage that is chosen, determined, and defined by the couple that enters into it. Romantic marriage is now dominant in the West and is becoming slightly more frequent in other parts of the world. But it is a luxury and even here has only existed (except among a few elites) for a couple of centuries--and in only a few countries. The fact is that marriage is part of a much larger institution, which defines the particular shape and character of marriage: the kinship system.

The role that marriage plays in kinship encompasses far more than arranging a happy home in which two hearts may beat as one--in fact marriage is actually pretty indifferent to that particular aim. Nor has marriage historically concerned itself with compelling the particular male and female who have created a child to live together and care for that child. It is not the "right to marry" that creates an enduring relationship between heterosexual lovers or a stable home for a child, but the more far-reaching kinship system that assigns every one of the vast array of marriage rules a set of duties and obligations to enforce. These duties and obligations impinge even on romantic marriage, and not always to its advantage. The obligations of kinship imposed on traditional marriage have nothing to do with the romantic ideals expressed in gay marriage.

Consider four of the most profound effects of marriage within the kinship system.

The first is the most important: It is that marriage is concerned above all with female sexuality. The very existence of kinship depends on the protection of females from rape, degradation, and concubinage. This is why marriage between men and women has been necessary in virtually every society ever known. Marriage, whatever its particular manifestation in a particular culture or epoch, is essentially about who may and who may not have sexual access to a woman when she becomes an adult, and is also about how her adulthood--and sexual accessibility--is defined. Again, until quite recently, the woman herself had

little or nothing to say about this, while her parents and the community to which they answered had total control. The guardians of a female child or young woman had a duty to protect her virginity until the time came when marriage was permitted or, more frequently, insisted upon. This may seem a grim thing for the young woman--if you think of how the teenaged Natalie Wood was not permitted to go too far with Warren Beatty in Splendor in the Grass. But the duty of virginity can seem like a privilege, even a luxury, if you contrast it with the fate of child-prostitutes in brothels around the world. No wonder that weddings tend to be regarded as religious ceremonies in almost every culture: They celebrate the completion of a difficult task for the community as a whole.

This most profound aspect of marriage--protecting and controlling the sexuality of the child-bearing sex--is its only true reason for being, and it has no equivalent in same-sex marriage. Virginity until marriage, arranged marriages, the special status of the sexuality of one partner but not the other (and her protection from the other sex)--these motivating forces for marriage do not apply to same-sex lovers.

Second, kinship modifies marriage by imposing a set of rules that determines not only whom one may marry (someone from the right clan or family, of the right age, with proper abilities, wealth, or an adjoining vineyard), but, more important, whom one may not marry. Incest prohibition and other kinship rules that dictate one's few permissible and many impermissible sweethearts are part of traditional marriage. Gay marriage is blissfully free of these constraints. There is no particular reason to ban sexual intercourse between brothers, a father and a son of consenting age, or mother and daughter. There are no questions of ritual pollution: Will a hip Rabbi refuse to marry a Jewish man--even a Cohen--to a Gentile man? Do Irish women avoid Italian women? A same-sex marriage fails utterly to create forbidden relationships. If Tommy marries Bill, and they divorce, and Bill later marries a woman and has a daughter, no incest prohibition prevents Bill's daughter from marrying Tommy. The relationship between Bill and Tommy is a romantic fact, but it can't be fitted into the kinship system.

Third, marriage changes the nature of sexual relations between a man and a woman. Sexual intercourse between a married couple is licit; sexual intercourse before marriage, or adulterous sex during marriage, is not. Illicit sex is not necessarily a crime, but licit sexual intercourse enjoys a sanction in the moral universe, however we understand it, from which premarital and extramarital copulation is excluded. More important, the illicit or licit nature of heterosexual copulation is transmitted to the child, who is deemed legitimate or illegitimate based on the metaphysical category of its parents' coition.

Now to live in such a system, in which sexual intercourse can be illicit, is a great nuisance. Many of us feel that licit sexuality loses, moreover, a bit of its oomph. Gay lovers live merrily free of this system. Can we imagine Frank's family and friends warning him that "If Joe were serious, he would put a ring on your finger"? Do we ask Vera to stop stringing Sally along? Gay sexual practice is not sortable into these categories--licit-if-married but illicit-if-not (children adopted by a gay man or hygienically conceived by a lesbian mom can never be regarded as illegitimate). Neither does gay copulation become in any way more permissible, more noble after marriage. It is a scandal that homosexual intercourse should ever have been illegal, but having become legal, there remains no extra sanction--the kind which fathers with shotguns enforce upon heterosexual lovers. I am not aware of any gay marriage activist who suggests that gay men and women should create a new category of disapproval for their own sexual relationships, after so recently having been freed from the onerous and bigoted legal blight on homosexual acts. But without social disapproval of unmarried sex--what kind of madman would seek marriage?

Fourth, marriage defines the end of childhood, sets a boundary between generations within the same family and between families, and establishes the rules in any given society for crossing those boundaries. Marriage usually takes place at the beginning of adulthood; it changes the status of bride and groom from child in the birth family to adult in a new family. In many societies, such as village India and Jewish Chicagoland, a new bride becomes no more than an unpaid servant to her mother- and sisters-in-law. Even in modern romantic marriages, a groom becomes the hunting or business partner of his father-in-law and a member of his clubs; a bride becomes an ally of her mother-in-law in controlling her husband. There can, of course, be warm relations between families and their children's same-sex partners, but these come about because of liking, sympathy, and the inherent kindness of many people. A wedding between same-sex lovers does not create the fact (or even the feeling) of kinship between a man and his husband's family; a woman and her wife's kin. It will be nothing like the new kinship structure that a marriage imposes willy-nilly on two families who would otherwise loathe each other.

Marriage is also an initiation rite. Before World War II, high school graduation was accompanied by a burst of engagements; nowadays college graduation begins a season of weddings that go on every weekend for some years. In contrast, gay weddings are rather middle-aged affairs. My impression is borne out by the one available statistic, from the province of British Columbia, showing that the participants in first-time same-sex weddings are 13 years older, on average, then first-time brides-and-grooms. This feels about right. After all, declaring gay marriage legal will not produce the habit of saving oneself for marriage or create a culture which places a value on virginity or chastity (concepts that are frequently mocked in gay culture precisely because they are so irrelevant to gay romantic life). But virginity and chastity before marriage, license after--these are the burdens of real marriage, honored in spirit if not in letter, creating for women (women as modern as Beyoncé) the right to demand a tangible sacrifice from the men who would adore them.

These four aspects of marriage are not rights, but obligations. They are marriage's "a priori" because marriage is a part of the kinship system, and kinship depends on the protection, organization, and often the exploitation of female sexuality vis-à-vis males. None of these facts apply at all to love between people of the same sex, however solemn and profound that love may be. In gay marriage there are no virgins (actual or honorary), no incest, no illicit or licit sex, no merging of families, no creation of a new lineage. There's just my honey and me, and (in a rapidly increasing number of U.S. states) baby makes three.

What's wrong with this? In one sense, nothing at all. Gays who marry can be congratulated or regarded as foolish based on their individual choices, just as I might covet or lament the women my straight friends espouse. In fact, gay couples who marry enter into a relationship that married people might envy. Gay marriage may reside outside the kinship system, but it has all the wedding-planning, nest-building fun of marriage but none of its rules or obligations (except the duties that all lovers have toward one another). Gay spouses have none of our guilt about sex-before-marriage. They have no tedious obligations towards in-laws, need never worry about Oedipus or Electra, won't have to face a menacing set of brothers or aunts should they betray their spouse. But without these obligations--why marry? Gay marriage is as good as no marriage at all.

Sooner rather than later, the substantial differences between marriage and gay marriage will cause gay marriage, as a meaningful and popular institution, to fail on its own terms. Since gay relationships exist perfectly well outside the kinship system, to assume the burdens of marriage--the legal formalities, the duty of fidelity (which is no easier for gays than it is for straights), the slavishly imitative wedding ritual--will come to seem a nuisance. People in gay marriages will discover that mimicking the cozy bits of romantic heterosexual marriage does not make relationships stronger; romantic partners more loving, faithful, or sexy; domestic life more serene or exciting. They will discover that it is not the wedding vow that maintains marriages, but the force of the kinship system. Kinship imposes duties, penalties, and retribution that champagne toasts, self-designed wedding rings, and thousands of dollars worth of flowers are powerless to effect.

Few men would ever bother to enter into a romantic heterosexual marriage--much less three, as I have done--were it not for the iron grip of necessity that falls upon us when we are unwise enough to fall in love with a woman other than our mom. There would be very few flowerings of domestic ecstasy were it not for the granite underpinnings of marriage. Gay couples who marry are bound to be disappointed in marriage's impotence without these ghosts of past authority. Marriage has a lineage more ancient than any divine revelation, and before any system of law existed, kinship crushed our ancestors with complex and pitiless rules about incest, family, tribe, and totem. Gay marriage, which can be created by any passel of state supreme court justices with degrees from middling law schools, lacking the authority and majesty of the kinship system, will be a letdown.

When, in spite of current enthusiasm, gay marriage turns out to disappoint or bore the couples now so eager for its creation, its failure will be utterly irrelevant for gay people. The happiness of gay relationships up to now has had nothing to do with being married or unmarried; nor will they in the future. I suspect that the gay marriage movement will be remembered as a faintly humorous, even embarrassing stage in the liberation saga of the gay minority. The archetypal gay wedding portrait--a pair of middle-aged women or paunchy men looking uncomfortable in rented outfits worn at the wrong time of day--is destined to be hung in the same gallery of dated images of social progress alongside snapshots of flappers defiantly puffing cigarettes and Kodachromes of African Americans wearing dashikis. The freedom of gays to live openly as they please will easily survive the death of gay marriage.

So if the failure of gay marriage will not affect gay people, who will it hurt? Only everybody else.

As kinship fails to be relevant to gays, it will become fashionable to discredit it for everyone. The irrelevance of marriage to gay people will create a series of perfectly reasonable, perfectly unanswerable questions: If gays can aim at marriage, yet do without it equally well, who are we to demand it of one another? Who are women to demand it of men? Who are parents to demand it of their children's lovers--or to prohibit their children from taking lovers until parents decide arbitrarily they are "mature" or "ready"? By what right can government demand that citizens obey arbitrary and culturally specific kinship rules--rules about incest and the age of consent, rules that limit marriage to twosomes? Mediocre lawyers can create a fiction called gay marriage, but their idealism can't compel gay lovers to find it useful. But talented lawyers will be very efficient at challenging the complicated, incoherent, culturally relative survival from our most primitive social organization we call kinship. The whole set of fundamental, irrational assumptions that make marriage such a burden and such a civilizing force can easily be undone.

There is no doubt that women and children have suffered throughout human history from being over-protected and controlled. The consequences of under-protection and indifference will be immeasurably worse. In a world without kinship, women will lose their hard-earned status as sexual beings with personal autonomy and physical security. Children will lose their status as nonsexual beings.

Kinship creates these protections by adding the dimension of time, space, and thought to our sense of ourselves as food-eating, sex-having, child-rearing creatures. It makes us conscious not only of our parents and siblings but of their parents and siblings--our ancestors and our group identity. The family relations kinship creates--parents, godparents, uncles and sisters-in-law, cousins, clan, tribe, kingdom, nation--expand our sense of where we live and how we live. In our thought, kinship forces us to move beyond thoughtless obedience to instinct: It gives us a morality based on custom, "always adaptable and susceptible to the nuance of the situation." It makes past experience relevant to current behavior (I quote Michael Oakeshott and paraphrase Peter Winch) and gives us the ability to choose one way of conduct rather than another--the ability which Oakeshott says brings the moral life into being. The commonality of incest prohibitions and marriage rules from one community to another is a sign that we have moved from unselfconscious instinct-obedience (which works well enough to avoid parent-child incest in other species) to the elaboration of human kinship relationships in all their mutations and varieties--all of which have the same core (the organization of female sexuality, the avoidance of incest) but exist in glorious variety. Like the other great human determinant, language, kinship is infinitely variable in form but exists in some form everywhere.

Can gay men and women be as generous as we straight men are? Will you consider us as men who love, just as you do, and not merely as homophobes or Baptists? Every day thousands of ordinary heterosexual men surrender the dream of gratifying our immediate erotic desires. Instead, heroically, resignedly, we march up the aisle with our new brides, starting out upon what that cad poet Shelley called the longest journey, attired in the chains of the kinship system--a system from which you have been spared. Imitate our self-surrender. If gay men and women could see the price that humanity--particularly the women and children among us--will pay, simply in order that a gay person can say of someone she already loves with perfect competence, "Hey, meet the missus!"--no doubt they will think again. If not, we're about to see how well humanity will do without something as basic to our existence as gravity.

Glamorous star Cameron Diaz illustrates Hollywood's contradictions on marriage-affirming its importance for homosexuals, but not straight people. She recently told Parade magazine that we're all "meant to be" with a series of replaceable lovers.

"You always find the person you're meant to be with at that time in your life," she said, "and you have to move on from those people at certain times. A lot of people find themselves trapped in something that they've outgrown and are unhappy. And they don't know how to get out of it because they think they're supposed to make it happen."

Meanwhile, the argument for gay marriage embraced by Tinseltown claims happiness is impossible for gay people without marriage. Do they really think exclusive, long-term relationships are more appropriate for gays than for straights?

President Obama repeatedly insists that American foreign policy be conducted with modesty and humility. Above all, there will be no more "dictating" to other countries. We should "forge partnerships as opposed to simply dictating solutions," he told the G-20 summit. In Middle East negotiations, he told al-Arabiya, America will henceforth "start by listening, because all too often the United States starts by dictating."

An admirable sentiment. It applies to everyone -- Iran, Russia, Cuba, Syria, even Venezuela. Except Israel. Israel is ordered to freeze all settlement activity. As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton imperiously explained the diktat: "a stop to settlements -- not some settlements, not outposts, not natural-growth exceptions."

What's the issue? No "natural growth" means strangling to death the thriving towns close to the 1949 armistice line, many of them suburbs of Jerusalem, that every negotiation over the past decade has envisioned Israel retaining. It means no increase in population. Which means no babies. Or if you have babies, no housing for them -- not even within the existing town boundaries. Which means for every child born, someone has to move out. No community can survive like that. The obvious objective is to undermine and destroy these towns -- even before negotiations.

To what end? Over the past decade, the U.S. government has understood that any final peace treaty would involve Israel retaining some of the close-in settlements -- and compensating the Palestinians accordingly with land from within Israel itself.

That was envisioned in the Clinton plan in the Camp David negotiations in 2000, and again at Taba in 2001. After all, why expel people from their homes and turn their towns to rubble when, instead, Arabs and Jews can stay in their homes if the 1949 armistice line is shifted slightly into the Palestinian side to capture the major close-in Jewish settlements, and then shifted into Israeli territory to capture Israeli land to give to the Palestinians?

This idea is not only logical, not only accepted by both Democratic and Republican administrations for the past decade, but was agreed to in writing in the letters of understanding exchanged between Israel and the United States in 2004 -- and subsequently overwhelmingly endorsed by a concurrent resolution of Congress.

Yet the Obama State Department has repeatedly refused to endorse these agreements or even say it will honor them. This from a president who piously insists that all parties to the conflict honor previous obligations. And who now expects Israel to accept new American assurances in return for concrete and irreversible Israeli concessions, when he himself has just cynically discarded past American assurances.

The entire "natural growth" issue is a concoction. Is the peace process moribund because a teacher in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem is making an addition to her house to accommodate new grandchildren? It is perverse to make this the center point of the peace process at a time when Gaza is run by Hamas terrorists dedicated to permanent war with Israel and when Mahmoud Abbas, having turned down every one of Ehud Olmert's peace offers, brazenly declares that he is in a waiting mode -- waiting for Hamas to become moderate and for Israel to cave -- before he'll do anything to advance peace.

In his much-heralded "Muslim world" address in Cairo yesterday, Obama declared that the Palestinian people's "situation" is "intolerable." Indeed it is, the result of 60 years of Palestinian leadership that gave its people corruption, tyranny, religious intolerance and forced militarization; leadership that for three generations rejected every offer of independence and dignity, choosing destitution and despair rather than accept any settlement not accompanied by the extinction of Israel.

That's why Haj Amin al-Husseini chose war rather than a two-state solution in 1947. Why Yasser Arafat turned down a Palestinian state in 2000. And why Abbas rejected Olmert's even more generous December 2008 offer.

In the 16 years since the Oslo accords turned the West Bank and Gaza over to the Palestinians, their leaders built no roads, no courthouses, no hospitals, none of the fundamental state institutions that would relieve their people's suffering. Instead they poured everything into an infrastructure of war and terror, all the while depositing billions (from gullible Western donors) into their Swiss bank accounts.

Obama says he came to Cairo to tell the truth. But he uttered not a word of that. Instead, among all the bromides and lofty sentiments, he issued but one concrete declaration of new American policy: "The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements," thus reinforcing the myth that Palestinian misery and statelessness are the fault of Israel and the settlements.

Blaming Israel and picking a fight over "natural growth" may curry favor with the Muslim "street." But it will only induce the Arab states to do like Abbas: sit and wait for America to deliver Israel on a platter. Which makes the Obama strategy not just dishonorable but self-defeating.

[The internet behaved very weirdly when I tried to read this particular article; it kept giving me the article and then changing to a page which said, article not found. For this reason, I thought maybe this should be more than just a link.]

New info: See updates below for Walpin's "one-hour deadline" e-mail to the White House.

There are a number of unanswered questions today about President Obama's abrupt decision to fire the inspector general of the AmeriCorps program, Gerald Walpin. Obama sent letters to House and Senate leaders yesterday informing them that he was firing Walpin, effective 30 days from the date of the letters.

"It is vital that I have the fullest confidence in the appointees serving as Inspectors General," the president wrote. "That is no longer the case with regard to this Inspector General."

The 30 day requirement is important because last year Congress passed the Inspectors General Reform Act, which was designed to strengthen protections for IGs, who have the responsibility of investigating allegations of waste, fraud and abuse within federal agencies, against interference by political appointees or the White House. Part of the Act was a requirement that the president give Congress 30 days' notice before dismissing an IG. One of the co-sponsors of the Act was then-Sen. Barack Obama.

The Act also requires the president to outline the cause for his decision to remove an IG. Beyond saying that he did not have the "fullest confidence" in Walpin, Obama gave no reason for his action.

There are two big questions about the president's actions. One, why did he decide to fire Walpin? And two, did he abide by the law that he himself co-sponsored?

According to Republican Sen. Charles Grassley, a strong advocate of inspectors general, Walpin received a call from the White House Counsel's office on Wednesday evening. Walpin was told that he had one hour to either resign or be fired. Senate sources say Walpin asked why he was being fired and, according to one source, "The answer that was given was that it's just time to move on. The president would like to have someone else in that position." Walpin declined to resign.

Grassley fired off a letter to the president on Thursday saying that, "I was troubled to learn that [Wednesday] night your staff reportedly issued an ultimatum to the AmeriCorps Inspector General Gerald Walpin that he had one hour to resign or be terminated," Grassley wrote. "As you know, Inspectors General were created by Congress as a means to combat waste, fraud, and abuse and to be independent watchdogs ensuring that federal agencies were held accountable for their actions. Inspectors General were designed to have a dual role reporting to both the President and Congress so that they would be free from undue political pressure. This independence is the hallmark of all Inspectors General and is essential so they may operate independently, without political pressure or interference from agencies attempting to keep their failings from public scrutiny."

Grassley's version of events suggests that the White House first tried to muscle Walpin out of his job without having to go through the 30-day process. It was only when Walpin refused to resign that the White House then notified Congress of the president's intention to fire Walpin.

The bigger question is why the president is doing this and why he is attempting to do it so quickly. Senate sources now believe Obama is firing Walpin over Walpin's investigation of Kevin Johnson, a former NBA star and a prominent supporter of the president.

Johnson, now the mayor of Sacramento, California, started a non-profit organization called St. Hope. The group's mission, according to its website, is "to revitalize inner-city communities through public education, civic leadership, economic development and the arts." As part of its work, St. Hope received a grant of about $850,000 from AmeriCorps.

Last year, Walpin began an investigation of how Johnson's group spent the money. According to the Associated Press, "[Walpin] found that Johnson, a former all-star point guard for the Phoenix Suns, had used AmeriCorps grants to pay volunteers to engage in school-board political activities, run personal errands for Johnson and even wash his car." Walpin asked federal prosecutors to investigate. In April, the U.S. attorney in Sacramento, a Bush holdover, declined to file any criminal charges in the matter and also criticized Walpin's investigation.

That might suggest that St. HOPE was OK, and it was Walpin who was in the wrong. But at the same time prosecutors decided not to file any charges against St. HOPE, the U.S. attorney's office also entered into a settlement with St. HOPE in which the group also agreed to pay back about half of the $850,000 it had received from AmeriCorps.

In his letter to the president, Grassley defended Walpin's performance. "There have been no negative findings against Mr. Walpin by the Integrity Committee of the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE), and he has identified millions of dollars in AmeriCorps funds either wasted outright or spent in violation of established guidelines," Grassley wrote. "In other words, it appears he has been doing his job. "

The bottom line is that the AmeriCorps IG accused a prominent Obama supporter of misusing AmeriCorps grant money. After an investigation, the prominent Obama supporter had to pay back more than $400,000 of that grant money. And Obama fired the AmeriCorps IG.

There are a number of new developments since my post above was published. First, the White House is confirming that it decided to fire IG Walpin because of the Kevin Johnson/St. HOPE affair. In a letter sent Thursday night to Sen. Charles Grassley, White House counsel Gregory Craig cited a complaint lodged by the acting U.S. attorney in Sacramento, Lawrence Brown, accusing Walpin of misconduct in the St. Hope investigation. "The Acting United States Attorney for the Eastern District of California, a career prosecutor who was appointed to his post during the Bush Administration, has referred Mr. Walpin's conduct for review by the Integrity Committee of the Council of Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE)," Craig wrote. "We are aware of the circumstances leading to that referral and of Mr. Walpin's conduct throughout his tenure and can assure you that the President's decision was carefully considered." This is the White House's first public statement of its reason for firing Walpin.

In the referral which Craig mentioned, which was sent April 29, Lawrence Brown accused Walpin of conducting a biased investigation and seeking "to act as the investigator, advocate, judge, jury and town crier." Brown was particularly angry that Walpin's office had talked with the press at various times in the St. HOPE investigation. Brown asked AmeriCorps to investigate Walpin's behavior. In a stinging response, Walpin wrote that several of Brown's points were flat-out wrong.

More importantly, Walpin's response sheds light on the process by which St. Hope will allegedly return to the government about half of the $850,000 grant it received from AmeriCorps. Walpin accused the U.S. attorney's office of undermining Walpin's attempt at "suspension and debarment" -- that is, from taking action that prevents an organization that has engaged in misconduct from receiving any other federal money.

According to Walpin, the U.S. attorney's office resisted efforts to get St. HOPE to repay the money. Even though AmeriCorps inspector general officials had found "six specific instances of diversion and misuse of [AmeriCorps] grant funds," and even though Kevin Johnson never "submitted a single fact to dispute those findings," the U.S. attorney, according to Walpin, insisted that the settlement agreement forbid suspension or debarment.

Further, according to Walpin, even with the settlement agreement as it now exists, there is little hope the government will ever get any of its money back. "As St. HOPE is insolvent, the absence of any obligation imposed on.[Kevin Johnson], and the absence of any guarantee or security to ensure payment, makes the settlement a farce," Walpin wrote.

"Mr. Brown knows," Walpin concluded, "that the settlement agreement was carefully drafted so that no obligation is imposed on Mr. Johnson to pay to [AmeriCorps] a single penny of the amount supposedly to be paid to [AmeriCorps] by St. HOPE."

Walpin's response has led congressional investigators to want to know more about Brown, the acting U.S. attorney. I referred to him earlier as a "Bush holdover." That's not entirely accurate. Brown is now the acting U.S. attorney, and he was in the office during the Bush years, but he is a career official, not a Bush appointee. In the days to come, congressional investigators will be weighing Brown's claims versus Walpin's. A lot is going on with the story, and it is happening very quickly.

On Wednesday night, after the White House counsel's office called AmeriCorps inspector general Gerald Walpin on his cell phone to tell him he had one hour to resign or be fired, Walpin sent an extensive e-mail account of the call to the man who had phoned him, Norman Eisen, the Special Counsel to the President for Ethics and Government Reform. In the e-mail, Walpin explained that he would not make a decision in such a short period of time. He also noted that Eisen had said any appearance of a connection between Walpin's firing and recent conflicts over Walpin's handing of high-profile investigations was "coincidence." Here is the whole e-mail, sent from Walpin to Eisen at 7:32 p.m. on June 10:

My email responds to your telephone call to me while I was in a car driving on a highway, at about 5:20 p.m. I have now reached a destination and therefore can write you this email.

In your telephone call, you informed me that the President wishes me to resign my post as IG of CNCS [Corporation for National and Community Service, which includes AmeriCorps]. You told me that I could take no more than an hour to make a decision.

As you know, Congress intended the Inspector General of CNCS to have the utmost independence of judgment in his deliberations respecting the propriety of the agency's conduct and the actions of its officers. That is why the relevant statute provides that the President may remove the IG only if he supplies the Congress with a statement of his reasons--which is quite a different matter than executive branch officials who serve at his pleasure and can therefore be removed for any reason and without notification to Congress.

I take this statutorily-mandated independence of my office very seriously, and, under the present circumstances, I simply cannot make a decision to respect or decline what you have said were the President's wishes within an hour or indeed any such short time. As you are aware, I have just issued two reports highly critical of the actions of CNCS, which is presently under the direction of the President's appointee and, I am advised, someone with a meaningful relationship with the President.

Chairman Solomont and I have had significant disagreements about the findings and conclusions contained in these reports. It would do a disservice to the independent scheme that Congress has mandated--and could potentially raise questions about my own integrity--if I were to render what would seem to many a very hasty response to your request.

I heard your statement that this request that you communicated on behalf of the President and the timing of our reports and disagreement with the CNCS Board and management are "coincidence," as you put it on the phone, but I would suggest there is a high likelihood that others may see it otherwise.

I suspect that, when presented with the circumstances I have just discussed, the President will see the propriety of providing me additional time to reflect on his request. If however he believes that my departure is a matter of urgency, then he will have to take the appropriate steps toward ordering my removal, without my agreement.

Some strange and potentially suspicious events tonight concerning the Obama White House and the AmeriCorps program. I've been told that on Wednesday night the AmeriCorps inspector general, Gerald Walpin, received a call from the White House counsel's office telling him that he had one hour to either resign or be fired. The White House did not cite a reason. "The answer that was given was that it's just time to move on," one Senate source told me tonight. "The president would like to have someone else in that position."

Inspectors General are part of every federal department. They are given the responsibility of independently investigating allegations of waste, fraud, and corruption in the government, without fear of interference by political appointees or the White House. Last year Congress passed the Inspectors General Reform Act, which added new protections for IGs, including a measure requiring the president to give Congress 30 days prior notice before dismissing an IG. The president must also give Congress an explanation of why the action is needed. Then-Sen. Barack Obama was one of the co-sponsors of the Act.

Now, there is the hurried attempt to dismiss Walpin, without the required notice or cause. After last night's call, Walpin got in touch with Congress, and it appears the White House has backed off, at least for now. This afternoon, Republican Sen. Charles Grassley, who is something of a guardian angel for inspectors general, fired off a letter to the White House about the affair.

"I was troubled to learn that last night your staff reportedly issued an ultimatum to the AmeriCorps Inspector General Gerald Walpin that he had one hour to resign or be terminated," Grassley wrote. "As you know, Inspectors General were created by Congress as a means to combat waste, fraud, and abuse and to be independent watchdogs ensuring that federal agencies were held accountable for their actions. Inspectors General were designed to have a dual role reporting to both the President and Congress so that they would be free from undue political pressure. This independence is the hallmark of all Inspectors General and is essential so they may operate independently, without political pressure or interference from agencies attempting to keep their failings from public scrutiny."

Grassley said he was "deeply troubled" by the Walpin matter and closed by asking the president "to review the Inspector General Reform Act you cosponsored and to follow the letter of the law should you have cause to remove any Inspector General."

UPDATE 1: I've been trying to discover the real reason for Obama's move, and it's still not clear. I'm told that it could be a combination of the normal tensions that surround any inspector general's office, or the president's desire to get his own people in IG positions, or a dispute over a particular investigation. "Bottom line," one source wrote, "getting rid of a tough, Republican-appointed IG who has been aggressively going after waste and fraud gives Obama a chance to replace that IG with a more compliant team player."

I'm also told that a number of inspectors general around the government have been expressing concerns to Congress recently about threats to their independence.

UPDATE 2: More information now, from the Associated Press. The White House is going ahead with firing Walpin. The firing apparently stems from Walpin's investigation of a non-profit group, St. HOPE Academy, run by Kevin Johnson, the former NBA star who is now mayor of Sacramento, California (and a big Obama supporter). "[Walpin] found that Johnson, a former all-star point guard for the Phoenix Suns, had used AmeriCorps grants to pay volunteers to engage in school-board political activities, run personal errands for Johnson and even wash his car," the AP reports. In April, the U.S. attorney declined to file any criminal charges in the matter and criticized Walpin's investigation. But at the same time Johnson and St. HOPE agreed to repay about half of the $850,000 it had received from AmeriCorps.

Bottom line: The AmeriCorps IG accuses prominent Obama supporter of misusing AmeriCorps grant money. Prominent Obama supporter has to pay back more than $400,000 of that grant money. Obama fires AmeriCorps IG.

The Heritage Foundation tells us what sorts of budget restraints Republicans ought to fight for, noting that their proposed budget cuts are somewhat anemic:

RUSH: We'll start in Champaign, Illinois. This is John. Great to have with us, sir, hello.

CALLER: The government already mandates auto insurance, and there are hundreds, if not thousands of profitable auto insurance companies. Why wouldn't the same thing work for health insurance companies?

RUSH: Well, then you are amazingly bright, and I'm not surprised that you would be in this audience. I was going to mention this during our health care discussion today. It's a piece in the Wall Street Journal written by Steven Burd. He is the CEO of Safeway and the founder of the Coalition to Advance Healthcare Reform. Now, the picture painted by the American left is that American corporations are evil, that they exist to rape and take advantage of their own employees, that they can't be trusted, that they have to have their payment, their salaries controlled by Obama's thugs. So when you know that that's the template that this administration has painted and the American left for years has painted of CEOs, reading this op-ed by Steven Burd in the Wall Street Journal is amazing. It's entitled: "How Safeway Is Cutting Health-Care Costs -- Market-based solutions can reduce the national health-care bill by 40%."

Here's how he starts the piece: "Effective health-care reform must meet two objectives: 1) It must secure coverage for all Americans, and 2) it must dramatically lower the cost of health care. Health-care spending has outpaced the rise in all other consumer spending by nearly a factor of three since 1980, increasing to 18% of GDP in 2009 from 9% of GDP. This disturbing trend will not change regardless of who pays these costs -- government or the private sector -- unless we can find a way to improve the health of our citizens. Failure to do so will make American companies less competitive in the global marketplace, increase taxes, and undermine our economy. At Safeway we believe that well-designed health-care reform, utilizing market-based solutions, can ultimately reduce our nation's health-care bill by 40%." They've done it at Safeway.

"The key to achieving these savings is health-care plans that reward healthy behavior," and this gets to John's question. "As a self-insured employer, Safeway designed just such a plan in 2005 and has made continuous improvements each year.

The results have been remarkable. During this four-year period, we have kept our per capita health-care costs flat (that includes both the employee and the employer portion), while most American companies' costs have increased 38% over the same four years. Safeway's plan capitalizes on two key insights gained in 2005. The first is that 70% of all health-care costs are the direct result of behavior. The second insight, which is well understood by the providers of health care, is that 74% of all costs are confined to four chronic conditions (cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and obesity). Furthermore, 80% of cardiovascular disease and diabetes is preventable, 60% of cancers are preventable, and more than 90% of obesity is preventable.

"As much as we would like to take credit for being a health-care innovator, Safeway has done nothing more than borrow from the well-tested automobile insurance model. For decades, driving behavior has been correlated with accident risk and has therefore translated into premium differences among drivers. Stated somewhat differently, the auto-insurance industry has long recognized the role of personal responsibility. As a result, bad behaviors (like speeding, tickets for failure to follow the rules of the road, and frequency of accidents) are considered when establishing insurance premiums. Bad driver premiums are not subsidized by the good driver premiums." Good driver premiums are low. So all they've done at Safeway essentially is say, okay, here's how they're doing with auto insurance, that's how they're doing it at Safeway. They're simply demanding responsibility from their employees, and that keeps the costs down. It's exactly what I was talking about yesterday when Snerdley was so afraid that I had insulted the nation.

I reminded people of the story in a small Texas town where nine people had made 2,600 visits to an emergency room in six years. Basically we have gotten to the point in our society where health care -- because it's been drumbeat into us that it's a right -- is that health care is something as free as breathing, that you're entitled to it as much as you are water coming out of the faucet. And if you get a sniffle or a sneeze, off to the doctor you go, or off to the emergency room you go if you don't have insurance. It's gotten to the point here where there's no personal responsibility. Now, when you talk about behavioral things in terms of preventing obesity or diabetes, type two diabetes is related to obesity. And, of course, obesity can be controlled. It's hard, but it can be done. Cancer is another thing. Sixty percent -- I'm sure that's a reference to smoking and this sort of thing.

But his point is nevertheless well made. You can go out and get an auto insurance policy that's pretty affordable and makes sense. You have to have it, the state mandates that you have to have it. So you get it, it's pretty low if you have a good driving record. That's why people don't want points. They don't want to get pulled over, and so forth. What if the same attitudes could be applied to people in the way they live and their health? And that's all they've done at Safeway and they've kept costs static for four years. They have not risen. Now, imagine this, a private sector CEO -- supposedly the bane of our existence, evil people, they want to rape and exploit their employees -- showing the way here. Now, you know what's going to happen to this guy next week in the media. He's going to be destroyed. The Obamaites will do it.

RUSH: You know, yesterday during our discussion of health care, I was trying to remember where I had read that doctors are reimbursed, you know, not a full 100% on their billing in Medicare cases and I have heard from a number of doctors who have told me it's much worse than what I thought I knew. I want to read an e-mail from one just to give you a flavor of kind of e-mails I've been inundated with.

I am a Medicare physician, unfortunately. We do not get reimbursed 81% of anything. The old method of pricing services was called "usual, customary, and reasonable." That was before Medicare. That concept of "usual, customary, and reasonable" is long gone. Nowadays we're simply told by Medicare what the fee is for sure any given service we either agree to participate in Medicare and take their price fix or not. Now, if you wanted to use a percentage comparison, you would have to figure out what a physician would charge a patient in the free market and compare that to the Medicare fee -- and I can tell you that number would be far lower than 81%. When I get the very rare patient who actually pays cash out of pocket for their cataract surgery, I charge them $2,500. Medicare pays me about $700 for a cataract surgery.

That's 28%, Rush -- and this is typical across all of medicine, not just cataract surgery. The Medicare fee schedule is not based on anything. It's pulled out of thin air. Worse, they have managed to create an internecine class warfare among doctors. They've pitted primary care against surgeons. Every time there is a call for increased payments by primary care, they maintain those increased payments have to be offset by cuts in payments to specialists and this has been going on for years. This inter-doctor battle plays right into the hands of the socialized medicine takeover as you can well imagine. Over the last 44 years of Medicare the private insurers have seen that the doctors just roll over and take Medicare payments, so the private plans have slowly decreased their payments down to the Medicare rates. If we want to see patients we have no choice but to accept these fee schedules. I can tell you anything you want to know about these topics if you need the inside information.

It is worse than I thought, and of course they're ramming more and more people into Medicare -- and this is what Obama meant when he said he's going to put the squeeze on doctors. He's going to squeeze 'em even more in order keep their fees down, and then that's going to lead to, "Who's gonna want to go into the profession?" So it's all messed up out there. And, by the way, the government pays you when they're good and ready. There's not a reimbursement schedule that makes sense that they can be held to, and it's only going to get worse if the whole program is eventually nationalized and socialized because there's going to be nowhere else for anybody to go to get paid and you have to put up with whatever you have to put up with dealing with a bureaucracy.

RUSH: Now, I shared with you the op-ed in the Wall Street Journal written by the CEO of Safeway, Steven Burd (B-u-r-d), who has devised a plan that has not cost his company additional money over the last four years. By the way, his employees pay a portion of their health care, too. It's not totally company-provided. But they've modeled it after the auto insurance industry. The auto insurance has various premiums based on your driving record. The way Safeway is doing it, they're offering insurance premiums and health care coverage to their employees based on their behavior, and do they take risks in their lifestyle or not, and if they do they have a higher premium. Now, what's going to happen? This guy, Steven Burd, who with his op-ed today, has just blown a hole through the template that the left and people like Obama have been working on for the last 30 years, and that is that corporate CEOs are mean, evil, rotten people.

They exploit and use their employees. They don't care about the welfare of their employees. They only care about their own payments. They rape their companies. They fly around on corporate jets. They go to parties. They don't care whether the company makes money or not. They get paid anyway and we're going to stop this, blah, blah, blah. Now, what's going to happen to this Steven Burd guy if he's not careful, is there's going to be an investigation into how much money he makes. There will probably be an investigation into his political contributions. If his credibility can be undermined, it will be. Forget the results of his brilliant approach to keep health care costs down. This guy has just made Obama look bad.

He's just made the Democrats look bad. All the stories about harmful food products will be Safeway centric. Safeway customers will be the only ones interviewed in stories about healthy foods and those people will be asked if they hold Safeway responsible for selling unhealthy foods. "Did Safeway market these products in a seductive manner? Did you feel they took advantage of you?" Television will do these exact same stories outside of Safeway stores and we'll see the Safeway sign in the background. This guy, if they take note of this piece -- if this piece gets any traction at all, standard operating procedure on the American left is to go out and find a way to destroy this guy using their buds at state-controlled media, whose claim to fame is built on destroying people. I hope it doesn't happen. But history suggests that there's a good likelihood of it happening. Any stories about evil tobacco will somehow work Safeway stores into the story.

Same thing with soft drinks, snack foods, ice cream, butter, candy, obesity. They'll claim he's a hypocrite. While he's out there demanding proper behavior from employees, selling all on that unhealthy food to mothers blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Safeway going to be the default backdrop about any negative story with health food, corporate greed, you name it. Safeway just put itself in the crosshairs with this. This guy is gutsy. He's very courageous, because this is not advancing Obama's agenda. This is a piece demonstrating how we don't need Obama's agenda. What is this when you get right down to it? This is individualism, this is incentives, and this is personal responsibility all tied into a health care plan offered by Safeway. You see, I thought American corporations were evil, that they existed to abuse and take advantage of their own employees. You can't trust these CEOs and so forth. So it's going to be interesting here to see how it falls out.

RUSH: Here's Emmett in Houston. Great to have you on the EIB Network, sir. Hello.

CALLER: I wanted to go back to the Safeway op-ed piece in the Journal this morning, and I want to emphasize something that I thought was very important. The Safeway plan is a self-funded plan, meaning they're self-insured and they can decide and design the plan the way they want to within the confines of state and federal regulations. And to me it's a segue into discussing the mandates and things you talked about the other day in the insurance industry. I like to view the insurance companies as bookies. They're not gambling on our health. They want and have been the source of medical inflation for the last quarter century because the more money goes in for the premiums; yes, the more they pay out in claims. But in the meantime, they hang onto the money, the same way the bookie takes his 10% cut or juice. And I hold the insurance companies mostly responsible for the medical inflation we've experienced the last quarter century.

RUSH: Well, everybody has their enemy in the health care industry. You don't like the insurance companies. I don't like the government. I don't like Medicare, Medicaid. I don't like the autocratic way they run it, the way they're short-changing doctors. But you make a good point about Safeway. It's electable. It's not forced on them. The whole point of the Safeway CEO's op-ed was to say we're fashioning our health care insurance that's offered to our employees after automobile insurance, and in automobile insurance, you have a pretty varied fee structure, or premium structure. Because if you drive well, and if your kids don't bang up the car very much, you can get a lower premium and people get points on their license than if they're running stoplights and having accidents. So the point is, the auto insurance agency has low fees, midrange and high premiums.

The Safeway guy was pointing out: We offer a bunch of different fee structures here based on the employee decision on behavior. But Safeway doesn't force employees to quit smoking. They urge it and suggest it. They don't force them to not eat trans fat. All this is coming with a government plan! You're going to be forced. They're going to be able to regulate every aspect of liberty because, folks... Remember the story earlier from today. The Democrats are saying they're not even going to pay attention to the CBO scoring of this how much it's going to cost because it's going to be so high nobody would agree to pay for it. So they're going to ask Obama's Office of Management and Budget to do their own scoring and come up with a fake price that makes it look like we can support it. Regardless, it's not going to be cheaper. There will be lines. There will be services not offered, particularly as you age. As you age, the federal government via its insurance companies will assess whether or not it makes sense to treat you if you're going to croak in the next couple or three years anyway. And you could be left out. It's the only way they can do it, and that's going to be a part of it. But the government plan is gonna force everybody... They're going to be able to get into every aspect of your life and regulate it, under the guise of "saving money" and "covering everybody" and so forth. Safeway is not doing that. They make it an elective. And their health care costs have not gone up in four years.

RUSH: There's one story here on health care and it's at TheHill.com. The headline: "Democrats Brace for CBO Score." People are insane. This is funny. "Senate Democrats are bracing for what they expect will be a huge price tag connected with revamping the nation's healthcare system." What, they can't get this delayed? Like I said yesterday, why can't we wait and see if anything else this man is doing works before we plunge into this? Because whether it works or not is not the question. The chaos is the question. Government control is the question. Obama running as much as he can is what the objective is, even though he denied it yesterday. "The soon-to-be-delivered estimate on Democratic healthcare reform proposals is expected to be so expensive that lawmakers are talking about changing the chamber's normal accounting procedures."

Now that's more like the Democrats we know and love. You don't like the result; change the procedures so you get a different result. "Some Democrats are arguing behind the scenes that they should not use the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office's (CBO) cost estimate, as is custom. Instead, they would use cost estimates from the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB)," which is Obama, which is Peter Orszag. "This unusual option could give Democratic leaders hundreds of billions of additional dollars to work with as they draft their plans. But Republicans would call it an accounting gimmick and a huge spending loophole." Well, what is it, Hill? It is an accounting gimmick!

They always use CBO. The idea CBO is nonpartisan is a bunch of crap anyway. The CBO is partisan. The Democrats run the House. The CBO comes out with their numbers. Yeah, it's what we blast Wall Street for all the time is using creaky accounting techniques and so forth, we're going to fire CEOs and limit their pay because they use creative accounting. We had to come up with Sarbanes-Oxley to make sure that we had mark to market value rather than these tricky games they play. Now, here the Democrats in the House, "Screw this, we're going to play games with it. If we don't like what CBO says, we'll just call Obama and say, 'Give us a lower number to work with here.'"

And Barbara Boxer even cited the CEO of Safeway. She said, "I haven't seen [the CBO score] but if they don't take into account prevention, I certainly won't. I will not follow it -- we just heard from the CEO of Safeway, who said his insurance costs went steadily down since they instigated incentives for prevention." Now, was it 40,000 employees at Safeway? This is a private sector plan and Barbara Boxer is citing it. What a dummkopf. She's undermining her own ideas and the Democrat Party's by citing the success of a private sector plan. See, they're all caught up here on the fact that Safeway is requiring that their employees engage in healthful behavior.

They're not requiring it. They're making it an option. The government's going to require this kind of stuff. Safeway is not telling its employees how they have to live every waking and sleeping moment of their lives. Here are the options. You engage in this kind of healthful behavior to lower your premium and bammo, you get a lower premium. The government's not going to offer that. The government is going to offer them covering everything and then they're going to use the control associated with authoritarianism and statism to demand that you behave that way. And it's not going to lower anybody's cost. When the government gets involved it's going to raise everybody's cost. These people are idiots. Dangerous, foolhardy idiots.

RUSH: There is an "election" -- and I say election in quotes -- in Iran today. The turnout, we hear, is astronomically high. It is so high that they had to extend voting by a full hour. President Mahmoud -- listen to this from the government-run media, Reuters: "A representative of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the conservative president was ahead in Friday's presidential vote." Note, the conservative president, the conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Why, yeah, there's no difference between Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Ronald Reagan. There's no difference whatsoever. They're both conservatives. Anyway, this whole election is a farce. Anybody with half a brain knows that the mullahs run the show. No matter who the president is, the mullahs run the show. The mullahs are the ones that are making decisions on whether to nuke up, go weapons or what have you, make no mistake about it, but nevertheless I want you to listen to a Drive-By Media montage we put together, the breathlessness and the excitement in these comments from members of the State-Run Media. Listen to this.

WILLIAMS: The election is being watched closely for any signs among other things that President Obama's recent Middle Eastern venture made a connection.

CAFFERTY: Can President Obama's speech to the Muslim world help defeat Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

BREWER: It's election day in Iran. The outcome could be an indication of how President's Obama's message of change is being received in the Islamic world.

NOVOTNY: President Obama delivering his historic speech to the Muslim word in Cairo, is that having any impact on today's election?

ENGEL: Obama's message to Iran and the Islamic world, that has appealed to many university students.

GREGORY: Is there an Obama effect here? A policy toward Iran of this unclenched fist, of more engagement. How do the Iranian people respond?

RUSH: This is just absurd. It is literally absurd. Whoever the mullahs want to be president is going to president, I don't care if it's Ahmadinejad or if it's Benjamin Netanyahu. Whoever the president of Iran is going to be is whoever the mullahs pick. Who do you think is counting these votes? But look at what we're being set up here to believe, that Barack Obama's speech in Cairo may have so moved the people of Iran that they're going to get rid of the leadership that is provoking the world with nuclear weapons. It's not only silly and stupid, it is dangerously naive, and I don't even know how naive it is. I think it's actually agenda-oriented. If the Iranian mullahs replace one puppet with another in their so-called election, it will have nothing to do with Obama. Zilch, zero, nada. Do you think the Iranians want the news worldwide that Obama's speech affected internal politics in Iran? If they do want that it will be to soften everybody up and to dissuade people from looking carefully at what Iran is doing.

So desperate, so desperate are these people that Barack Obama, with one speech, with a bunch of empty, meaningless words, can shape and change the direction of politics in the Middle East, particularly Iran. They must have to check their brains at the door when they walk into an NBC office or a CNN office because I don't know how anybody with a half functioning brain could, with a straight face, issue breathless news reports of such meaningless hope. I guarantee you this, if somebody besides Ahmadinejad is chosen by the mullahs get ready, because that's going to be the theme, Obama changed the direction of the Middle East. Obama with one speech in Cairo has shown that change and hope can extend beyond the borders of the United States and he's going to be feted as president of the world, god of the world. Meanwhile, the US economy is tanking. Barack Obama is destroying health care. He is destroying the American private sector. He is destroying the solvency of the United States government. And none of this is remarked upon. All that we hear about is this stupid, meaningless stuff going on in Iran.

A friend of mine made a good point to me the other day. Obama is all of a sudden now interested in paygo, right? We gotta pay for it as we go, we can't do any more deficit spending. Fine, if that's the case why not stop the rest of the stimulus spending? So far, only three-to-five percent has been spent. So if Obama would say, "You know what, we're not going to spend any more." You could save $700 billion or so. Can you imagine what a great shot in the arm that would be for the economy and for economic psychology and so forth? It will never happen; this is my point. This is my point. He's not concerned about deficit spending. He doesn't care what he's spending; he doesn't give a rat's rear end, he doesn't care what is happening to the country at large. All he wants is more control.

OBAMA: We are excited, uh, to see, uh, what appears to be a ro-robust debate taking place in Iran.

OBAMA: And obviously after the speech that I, uh, made in Cairo we tried to send a clear message that we think there is the possibility of change, uhhh, aaaand -- ehhh, yuh-- oh -- Ultimately the election is for the Iranians to decide, uh, but, uh, just a-as has been true in Lebanon, what's, uh -- can be true in Iran as well is that you're seeing people looking at new possibilities. And, uh, whoever, uh, ends up winning, uh, the election in Iran, uh, the fact that there's been a robust debate hopefully will help, uh, advance our ability to engage them in new ways.

RUSH: The ego of this man is simply incomprehensible to behold. Didn't President Obama say that we shouldn't impose our values on others? And wasn't Iran included in that? And now he's out taking credit for a "robust debate" because of his speech? I'm glad he put the qualifier in there: "Well, even if we don't end up with a new leader at least we've had a robust debate that will advance our ability to engage them in new ways." This is the Practiced Art of Deceit. President Obama knows that whoever the president of Iran is, is not relevant, that the mullahs run that country. It is the Islamic Republic of Iran. This presidential election and having a "president" is a buffer. It is to create an image to the world that there is some sort of freedom of choice in terms of the leadership in Iran, when we know there is not -- and Obama knows there is not. And yet here he is already taking credit for the election results in Lebanon and the "robust debate" in Iran. This guy has an ego and a narcissistic complex about himself, ladies and gentlemen, that can only be described as unhealthy and dangerous.

RUSH: You know, I'm not in the best of moods anyway. I can't stomach this. I have been fired. I've worked for people liked this, and I was unable to sit by and let 'em think they were getting away with this kind of stuff on me. I called 'em on it once, and I got canned for this. Just listen to this again.

OBAMA: -- a-as has been true in Lebanon, what's, uh -- can be true in Iran as well is that you're seeing people looking at new possibilities. And, uh, whoever, uh, ends up winning, uh, the election in Iran, uh, the fact that there's been a robust debate hopefully will help, uh, advance our ability to engage them in new ways.

RUSH: All right, what the hell is he talking about? Let's go back and look at something very little noticed. Marc Thiessen, National Review, pointed this out. Something little noticed in that speech that Obama gave that now he's out flexing his own muscle. "Look at me! Look at me! Look at what I did! Look at what I did. Look at what I did! I made the Middle East safe. They like us now. My speech made change! My speech made change! I did it! I did it! I did it! I did it! I did it!" It's just unseemly. It's unbecoming an adult. "[L]ittle noticed" in his stupid speech "was the fact that Obama announced a major shift in U.S. policy in the Holy Land. In 2002, President Bush declared in his Rose Garden address that America would only engage 'Palestinian leaders not compromised by terror.'

"In Cairo today, Obama reversed this policy, declaring that Hamas has 'to play a role in fulfilling Palestinian aspirations, and to unify the Palestinian people.' This is naive and dangerous." Yeah, there's been big change. We have now legitimized a terrorist organization in peace talks, so-called, with Israel. Big change! "Obama's talk about democracy..." Now he's taking credit here in this bite for all this wonderful, "robust debate" taking place in Iran, wonderful robust debate in Lebanon and the election results in Lebanon. "Look at how good I am! Look at the power of my words. Look at the power of my presence! I did it! I did it! I did it! I did it! I did it! I did it! I did it! I did it! I did it! I did it! I'm making the world safer!"

I feel like he's in a Charlie Brown cartoon. His talk about democracy was all platitudes, no specifics, as if he had to check a box so that he wouldn't be criticized for ignoring it. But he made no mention of freedom or democracy in Egypt. "President Bush repeatedly called for release of Ayman Nour, the opposition presidential candidate who was jailed for four years. In February, Nour was finally released -- but is now banned from appearing on TV or running for office. Obama made call for such restrictions to be lifted, no call for greater openness in the country where he was speaking. He made no mention of democracy in discussing Afghanistan. He made no mention of democracy in discussing Iraq.

"He made no mention of the advance of freedom in the Middle East that has taken place in recent years, or any commitment to continue it," and that would be Iraq. He has made no mention of the advance of freedom. In his worldview, our Iraq policy set us back and set the Middle East back decades -- and only now, by virtue of his presence and his one speech in Cairo, finally now we've got major change. Why, we've got a robust debate in Iran! And he didn't even talk about democracy in the Middle East in that speech. I know I ought to not let it bother me so much. But it just does. This personality type, I have trouble dealing with it and I probably ought to just ignore it, but I can't help but take the occasion to share all of this with you because it's just as offensive as it can be and to watch people just fall in line with it from the State-Run Media makes it even sicker.

RUSH: By the way, ladies and gentlemen, from the UK Times, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is claiming victory in the elections before the polls have even closed. Officials are estimating at least 70% of the, quote, unquote, "electorate" will have voted, one of the highest turnouts since the Islamic revolution in 1979 and supposedly the heavy turnout favors the opponent of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but Mahmoud's claiming victory now in the -- this is all so bogus. These are puppets.

Barack Obama fires the inspector general at AmeriCorps. He endorses voter intimidation. Remember, he dropped charges against the New Black Panther Party in Philadelphia for voter intimidation, typical Chicago thug behavior. He fires private sector CEOs; he nationalizes industries.

RUSH: This is Mohammed in Richmond, Virginia, as we go back to the phones. Thanks for waiting, sir. Hello.

CALLER: I'm a huge fan of yours. I saw you actually in CPAC back in February. You were amazing there.

CALLER: I saw the president's speech to the Muslim world the other day and, you know, with all due respect to the president, as a conservative and a Muslim, I was a little bit offended, because instead of apologizing for whatever, I didn't even know what he was apologizing for, he should apologize about presidents over the years ignoring the problem of terrorism until it killed 3,000 Americans and hundreds of thousands of Muslims around the world. Like the likes of Jimmy Carter and, you know, when Clinton ignored the Dar es Salaam and Nairobi attacks and then the Cole attack and all of these things and eventually we get this. It was not convenient for them to deal with it at the time. You know what? Apologize about that. Don't apologize about what America did to defend itself. I think America was justified to use military force against those who I don't even consider to be Muslims because our religion says respect the other and love people. It does not say blow yourself up in the name of God and in the name of the Prophet.

RUSH: Well, the militant Islamists say they can quote you chapter and verse where whatever it takes to beat the infidel is permissible and okay. You're a Muslim and a good guy, I don't want to argue with you about it, I want to focus on your first point about President Obama apologizing for the country. He is the first president I know of who has made it a task and made it an objective of his to run around the world and blame this country for the world's ills and say, "Okay, now that I'm here we're going to change it." This is a man who does not represent US interests abroad; he does not champion this country; he does just the opposite. And now this Mirandizing of terrorist suspects on the battlefield in Afghanistan, and that's going to proceed -- I mean where does this stop? They gonna get a public lawyer if they can't afford one? You're on the battlefield, you're a soldier, you capture a guy, how do you read him Miranda rights if you don't speak his language? And if you read him his Miranda rights in English and he comes back in court and says to you, "Well, I didn't understand." Then he gets a US lawyer, gets in the court system, this whole thing is just -- we've been down this road. See, this is another thing. Everything Obama is trying, somewhere it's been tried in the world, oftentimes many times, and it's failed every time. Trying to deal with terrorism as a legal matter is an abject failure, and all you need to do is look at the Clinton administration for evidence of it. Thanks, Mohammed, appreciate it.

RUSH: By the way, that democracy breaking out all over Iran that President Obama talked about this morning? Man, it must really be something over there. Listen to this from State-Controlled Reuters. "Voting in Iran's presidential election was extended by a fourth extra hour on Friday to 10 p.m., said state television," and then there's an update: "Voting was extended by six hours to midnight in Iran, which that's 3:30 p.m. our time." The Iranians can't even set their clocks right. They're off by a half hour. I mean, they don't even have ACORN! Can you imagine...? This is utter chaos at the polls, and they don't... Well, we don't think they have ACORN. Maybe Obama sent them over there. Do you realize Obama...? Mike, I want you to grab that sound bite. What is it, number 25 with Obama taking... Yeah, grab it. You gotta hear this again. Like I said earlier, folks, this personality type I don't have any tolerance for, or very little.

I have been fired by a guy who was just like this. 'Cause I called him on it, I couldn't handle the BS anymore. I couldn't handle the narcissism. It was just more than I could take it from the guy. I'll tell you what happened. The guy gave me a line, the biggest line of bull. I just finally said to him, "You know what? Don't try this with me. You don't know 90% of the people you say you know. You haven't accomplished 10% of the stuff you say you have. You're a nothing and a nobody and you can't tell me how to do what I'm doing." This is my young, brash days. So I go home, and a half hour later I get a call from the owner of the radio station saying, "We understand you had a meltdown today. You're out." 'Cause this narcissist had called (laughing) the owner of the radio station because he's in to cover his rear. He was afraid I wouldn't keep it to myself. Here's Obama claiming credit from a single speech in Cairo to massive changes for good in the Middle East.

OBAMA: We are excited, uh, to see, uh, what appears to be a ro-robust debate taking place in Iran. And obviously after the speech that I, uh, made in Cairo we tried to send a clear message that we think there is the possibility of change, uhhh, aaaand -- ehhh, yuh-- oh -- Ultimately the election is for the Iranians to decide, uh, but, uh, just a-as has been true in Lebanon, what's, uh -- can be true in Iran as well is that you're seeing people looking at new possibilities. And, uh, whoever, uh, ends up winning, uh, the election in Iran, uh, the fact that there's been a robust debate hopefully will help, uh, advance our ability to engage them in new ways.

RUSH: It's not a real election! These "presidents" in Iran are puppets! The mullahs run the show! What did the mullahs do, call the White House and give him a little update? "Hey, we think we're going to replace Mahmoud." I think the Iranians would love for Obama and the rest of the world to believe that they're moderating. They would love for everybody to believe that this little man-child can go make a speech and change everybody's outlook in the Middle East. That would take the heat off of Iran. Obama's out there saying, "Yeah, we got a robust debate. Yeah, look what's happens, just because of my speech!" So everybody says, "Okay, we don't need to worry about Iran anymore," and hello a nuclearized Iran shortly down the road.

RUSH: Now, ladies and gentlemen, I want you to listen to this next sound bite coming up. On National Public Radio -- and we have the audio coming up. The host is Steve Inskeep, and he interviewed the Carnegie Endowment's Karim Sadjadpour about the election in Iran. Somebody is still going to have to explain to me how Obama throwing Israel under the bus relates to the voting in Iran -- and the voting in Iran is irrelevant anyway because the president's a puppet. But I just want to you listen to Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment as he answers the question, "Who is still in Ahmadinejad's corner?"

SADJADPOUR: He ostensibly has the support of the Supreme Leader, a lot of the lower income classes in the provinces, kind of Iran's, uh, uh, uh, Republican states, if you will -- and certainly elements of Revolutionary Guards and the Basij militia. So I think his supporters are kind of akin to evangelicals in the United States in the sense that they're not considered a sizable portion of the population, but they're considered very committed. They -- they go and vote every time.

RUSH: All right. So National Public Radio has just... (laughing) You just have to laugh. The supporters of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are akin to Republican evangelicals and his support comes from a lot of lower income classes in the provinces, kind of Iran's Republican states. When somebody sent me this, I was speechless. "This can't possibly be," and then I heard it and said, yes, it actually happened on NPR. So go back, grab audio sound bite number 25. We gotta play this again. This is Obama this morning in the Rose Garden just outside the Oval Orifice.

RUSH: This just infuriates me. This is so, so, so childish and immature. In the first place, this trying to find some way to insinuate himself into a good outcome in Iran? The outcome is irrelevant. There's no good or bad outcome. The only thing that would change Iran is if the mullahs were dispatched, and the mullahs are there. And you heard this clown on NPR saying that the mullahs still support Ahmadinejad. Well, if they do, I can tell you right now who's going to win. Okay, so we've got Obama insinuating himself with this: "I did it! I made it happen! I'm really good. One speech, and, boy, we got democracy going there. Yip yip yip yip yahoo," and then Karim Sadjadpour from the Carnegie Endowment talking about who Ahmadinejad's supporters are.

RUSH: (laughing) Not very large but they go and vote all the time. Okey-doke. The question was also asked, "Do the clerics and the conservatives still support the president?" Do the clerics and the conservatives still support the president? Don't forget Reuters called today, called Ahmadinejad the "conservative" candidate. Now, don't forget, this guy has been embraced by Columbia University, which is not a conservative citadel. He has been embraced by the United Nations. (laughs) They love Ahmadinejad because he gave Bush fits.

RUSH: "The Obama administration today says that excessive executive compensation must be better managed to prevent the sort of risk-taking that jeopardizes the economy." Gene Sperling, who advises Timmy Geithner at the Treasury department, "said today that the administration does not want to impose caps on executive pay, but he also laid out for the House Financial Services Committee a list of guidelines calling on publicly held companies to link compensation to long-term performance, not short-term gains." They don't want to cap, they want to control, and then they lay out how they're going to do it, in typical Obama fashion, "No, we're not going to control. We're not going to cap anything! We'll let the shareholders decide." Well, who the shareholders more and more are becoming is the United States government!

There's another story, a lot of graduates this year decided to say, "Screw Wall Street! To hell with the private sector; I'm going to go work for the government," and why not? You could end up being a 31-year-old know-nothing and run a car company if you work for the United States government. And it's the one sector where there is no recession. There is no depression. There's no depressed value in your holdings. Everything is just hunky-dory when you work for the government. I'm telling you, this business here of reining in pay across the private sector... "Sperling said in prepared testimony the administration believes that compensation practices must be better aligned with long-term value and prudent risk management at all firms, not just for the financial services industry." That means Hollywood, too.

Does that mean that Oprah's pay is going to be supervised? She's an executive, and some might say that Oprah Winfrey making $227 million a year is a little bit excessive. Now, we've always had people throughout our history who have complained about the amount of money other people make. But let me tell you something, folks. The pursuit of wealth... You know, I often ask you to consider: What is it about the United States of America in less than 300 years that has allowed it -- us -- to become the most powerful-for-good force and nation in the history of this planet? There have been civilizations of people around far longer than we have. Europe and Asia. For some reason, the United States of America has become the most powerful nation on earth, the richest, the greatest standard of living. How did this happen? It's because we, as a nation, were founded under the principles of individual liberty.

And the source of our liberty and freedom was acknowledged in our founding documents as having come from God. We were not a nation put together by a king who thought he was God's gift to the world. We now have a president behaving like a king who thinks he is God's gift to the world. The pursuit of wealth, for whatever reason, is one of the primary ingredients that led to this nation's greatness. Now, wealth always gets demonized. It always has. There's always been class envy. But never, until now, has there really been a serious move to prevent it from happening. This is precisely what is happening now from the Obama administration. All of this is about preventing the successful pursuit of wealth.

The pursuit of wealth is what gave us the greatest economy in the history of humanity. Now we have an administration that wants to shut all that down. The private sector is not going to be the focus of this country. The public sector is going to be, and the people who run it. I don't have time to go into motivations and explain why they're doing it. It's enough that people understand that they are doing it. I know why they're doing it. They're statists. They want ultimate control. It's a power trip. It's also born of beliefs about this country that are untrue. Many of the people making these moves are simply poisoned, poisoned with their own hatred for this country. I would submit that there has to be an element of hatred for what this country is to make the assaults on this country that are being made.

Whatever is being done here in the name of "fairness and equality" is not being done because somebody loves this country. It's being done because somebody didn't like it, or a whole host of people didn't like it. There's something unjust and immoral about it. Now, Obama's book publisher, Crown Publishing, a division of Random House, they're laying people off. His book publisher is laying people off, but you know what? He got a $500,000 advance, five days before assuming office to write a children's book. I don't know of a president ever signing a book deal upon entering the White House. Isn't $500,000, in advance, for a book, risk-taking? Obama says we've gotta get risk-taking out of the scenario of compensation. If you take risk-taking out, if you remove that, you wave bye-bye to capitalism. You simply...

It's in your rearview mirror as you're heading down the road to serfdom. Capitalism is in the rearview mirror as you're headed down the road to serfdom, if you buy into this notion that risk-taking is something that needs to be punished! They're finally opening up and being honest about what they want to do. They want to punish achievers. They want to punish risk-takers. "The Obama administration..." Here it is from state-run AP: "The Obama administration says executive compensation must be better managed to prevent the sort of short-term risk-taking that it's so known for." Now, if we're going to cap people's pay -- and make no mistake, while they deny it, it's what they're doing -- if they're going to issue "guidelines calling on publicly held companies to link compensation to long-term performance, not short-term gains so they can eliminate risk-taking," then let's do the same thing with people who work for the government.

Let's cap government pay at $100,000 any year there is a deficit in the annual United States budget. Let's also include all of the imputed income for benefits of any kind federal employees get, from their cars to their health care to whatever it is. We taxpayers are taking a huge risk each and every day turning over the finances of this country to this current crop of leaders. And when they blow it -- and they have blown it -- it is an utter disaster. Do you realize nothing Obama has done has worked? Nothing has succeeded. And now they come along and they want to nationalize health care? The same bunch that, with their stimulus package, gave us record unemployment. Almost two million people are unemployed since the stimulus bill.

The same people who promised a thriving, burgeoning economy, with people going back to work, now want to take their expertise -- the same people who helped destroy General Motors and Chrysler, the same people who told private sector investors, "Pfft you!" The same people who have botched everything they have tried now tell us, only they can administer health care. So we cap government pay: a hundred grand a year, any time there's a deficit, any time they don't fulfill what they claim that they're going to do. You talk about risk-taking? You talk about damaging? This administration is damaging the entire US economy. They are damaging and attacking the US private sector. They ought not be rewarded for it, and if any federal employee leaves government after a budget deficit year, they get no pension. I mean, if we're going to start doing this stuff in the private sector, then let's apply the same rules to people in the government.

RUSH: Obama is out in Green Bay today, and he's doing a town hall meeting on socialized medicine, government health care. The reason he's out there doing this is because the polling on this is not looking good. Conservatives for Patients' Rights is a group that's stopping Obama, and they've got a post on their website today that cracks are forming around public opinion and

government-run health care. I'll tell you, cracks are forming on all of Obama's policies. Now, his approval number is still 62%. The Fox News poll just came out today, they sent it to me, and he was at 60% in the last reporting period a couple weeks ago, his approval rating is 62%. But if you look at issues, it's all falling apart on him. Nobody approves of his issues on things. It's the most amazing thing. And he knows it. I think there is panic going on in the White House. We're not even six months in, this guy was supposed to be universally loved and adored. There was not supposed to be one word of criticism that anybody would take seriously or listen to. And those people, the critics would all be marginalized, and we were all gonna be yummy, hummy, coming together, all this unity, no more shootings at Holocaust museums, no more shootings in Arkansas, none of this was supposed to happen. And now we find out it's worse, things are worse in this country than when Obama took office.

In fact, here it is. "American households lost $1.33 trillion of their wealth in the first three months of the year as the recession took a bite out of stock portfolios and dragged down home prices. The Federal Reserve reported Thursday that household net worth fell to $50.38 trillion in the January-March quarter." Americans' net worth shrinks by 1.33 trillion in the first quarter, gone, poof, since Obama was put into office. Don't say that January wasn't his. He was running the show behind the scenes as part of the transition. He was urging Bush to bail out General Motors. He was doing a whole bunch of stuff. One-point-three trillion, poof! So, he's out there in Green Bay today, he's trying to revive the polling on health care, and he gets a very tepid response, very weak applause to his presentation here of public insurance option.

OBAMA: One of the options in the exchange should be a public insurance option. (applause) Now -- and the reason is not because we want a government takeover of health care. I've already said, if you've got a private plan that works for you, that's great, but we want some competition. If the private insurance companies have to compete with a public option, it will keep 'em honest and it will keep -- (applause) -- help keep their prices down.

RUSH: My friends, look, I really resent the position this man puts me in, but that's a lie. There will be no private insurance once they get a public option. That's the dirty little secret. There will be no competition. That's the dirty little secret. Once a public option is in place, the insurance companies are not going to be able to compete. They're not even going to try. The insurance companies are going to try to off-load. Once there is a public option you're going to see the insurance companies get out of it and get on board the government plan for a whole host of reasons. The dirty little secret here is that the idea of a public option is to end up with a single payer, and that's the federal government. Now, the response, to me, did not sound tepid, but it was. It may not sound tepid to you, but if you looked at it on television and saw it, you would agree that the applause here is not roaring. I mean, it's not like he's used to getting. Here's the next sound bite.

OBAMA: I'll be honest, even with these savings reform will require some additional up-front resources. And that's why I've proposed that we scale back how much the highest-income Americans can deduct on their tax -- taxes, back -- take it back to the rate that existed under the Reagan years. And we could use some of that money to help finance health care reform.

RUSH: That's not very much applause. We scale back how much highest-income Americans can deduct on their taxes, take us back to the rate that existed under the Reagan years. Well, now, there were many rates that existed under the Reagan years. This is also designed to fool you because everybody associates Reagan with tax cutting, properly so. Do you know what the top marginal rate was when Ronald Reagan took office? Seventy percent. The top marginal rate when Ronald Reagan left office was 28%. But it took eight years to lower those rates, so what rate is he talking about here? Seventy percent? Fifty percent? What rate's he talking about? He doesn't specify. He just wants more taxes on the rich and somehow this is magically going to pay for health care and all these people are going to get it for free. That's the impression he's trying to leave. Here's the next one.

OBAMA: There are some folks who say socialized medicine -- you hear that all the time --

OBAMA: -- socialized medicine. Well, socialized medicine would mean that the government would basically run all of health care, they would, you know, hire the doctors; they would run hospitals; they just run the whole thing. Great Britain has a system of socialized medicine. Nobody's talking about doing that, all right? So when you hear people saying, socialized medicine, understand, I don't know anybody in Washington who is proposing that, certainly not me. Socialized medicine is different from a single-payer plan.

RUSH: Stop, stop. No, it's not. Have you not heard what Senator Kennedy is working on? Nobody in Washington is talking about what he's -- look, I don't like being in this position of having to call the president of the United States a liar, but I'm given no choice. I've gotta take a break, but I got a whole Stack of Stuff here on health care and I'm going to get into it in the next hour because I have to go now.

RUSH: Even if there is a private option in health care, you're still going to have to pay for the government option. You're going to pay it in taxes; you're going to pay it any number of ways. I just find it amazing, if you listen to President Obama out there in Green Bay, where he's being protested, by the way, but they're not going to report that, protesters outside, it's amazing how he gets so defensive when people speak the truth about his plans. Very defensive when the truth is spoken about this man.

RUSH: President Obama this afternoon in Green Bay doing a town hall meeting, promoting his socialized medicine reform, and an unidentified member of the audience says, "What's your philosophy about primary care and the role of primary care? You subscribe to the medical home theory? How do you engage patient --" did somebody really show up with this question? I'm sorry I interrupted myself halfway through the question. I have my doubts here that somebody got up in Green Bay today and said, "I'm going to go to a town meeting, I got a question, 'What is your philosophy about primary care and the role of primary care? Do you subscribe to the medical home theory? How do you engage patients in this model so that that risk can be better managed and we can ultimately result in a population that has better health at a lower cost?'" Now, I can't sit here and believe that some citizen in Green Bay came up with this question. I'm not suggesting anything. (laughing) I'm saying that this is a planted question. Anyway, here's The One's answer.

OBAMA: The more we are incentivizing high quality primary care, prevention, wellness, management of chronic illnesses -- I mean one of the things that it turns out is that about 20% of the patients account for 80% of the care and the costs of the health care system. And if we can get somebody first of all who is overweight to lose weight so that they don't become diabetic, we save tons of money.

RUSH: Bingo, and that's exactly what he is going to have the power to do. That's the kind of power he's looking for. Once they get this, you know, Mona Charen in her syndicated column today said this is the ball game. Obama's health care is the ball game. If he gets this, this never gets rolled back. If he gets this, virtually every behavior that we engage in could be subject to regulation based on its cost to health care. Now, this statistic, 20% of the patients account for 80% of the care. Would he care to tell us the age of that 20%? Because I will guarantee you that the bulk of that 20% are people who have fewer years ahead of them than they have lived. I'm not being insulting here. I'm just saying most of our expensive health care comes as we approach the end of life. Fact of life. That ought to tell us right there where we need to stop spending money on health care. This public option versus the private option, look, all they're going to do is be expanding Medicare. That's all they're going to do, folks, is Medicare is going to be expanded to where everybody has to use it, even if you have a private option, even if you're able to go out and buy private insurance, you're still going to have to opt into the Medicare program. That's the objective.

Now, Obama said in a previous sound bite that we played that Great Britain has a system of socialized medicine, and nobody is talking about doing that. As I said, I really don't like this man putting me in a position to have to accuse him of lying, I don't like saying that about the president of the United States, but one of his first acts upon taking office was to provide $1.1 billion through the Porkulus bill for a national health care board that was designed to oversee the effectiveness of health services modeled after the UK's National Institute for Clinical Excellence. One-point-one billion was spent to create an identical type of bureaucracy that the UK has, the United Kingdom, Britain, in its health care program. He also entitled the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research. Its description side steps its intent of cost containment, noting that it will coordinate the conduct or support of comparative effectiveness and related health services research. As the bill was passed without legislators reading it, the Porkulus bill, let alone studying it, many concerns have been raised since its passage both in the political and public realms regarding exactly what and who this comparative effectiveness research will analyze and how those results are going to be implemented or enforced.

The bottom line, he's already set up a socialized medicine health care board in the Porkulus bill modeled after the UK, which he admitted is a socialist system, socialized medicine, there's no other way to describe what the man wants to do than to call it socialized medicine. Single payer socialized medicine. And it's all about control. It's not about cost. This man's not worried about the cost of anything. He doesn't care what anything costs. A trip to New York for a date, $12 trillion in debt over ten years, he doesn't care what things cost. That's just to make you think he does. He doesn't care what health care costs. In strict financial terms we don't have the money as a country to be buying anything. We don't have the money. Do you realize we only have the money because the Chinese buy our bonds? But we don't have the money. We are spending so far beyond our income. He doesn't care about that. There's no way any government program has reduced the cost of anything that I know of.

Mona Charen has this, Sally Pipes, The Top Ten Myths of American Health Care. Thirty years ago in Medicare, Medicaid and so forth there were 252 mandates on insurance companies. Today there are 1,901 mandates. That's an average of 38 per state. Now, what is a mandate? Well, to understand a mandate, you first have to beware of politicians bearing statistics. Mona Charen: "What is even more galling than misleading (or outright false) statistics is to watch politicians rail about the expense of health insurance without once acknowledging their own role in jacking up the price. Health care is expensive of course -- though it also delivers value (improved quality and length of life). But our jerry-built system has made buying insurance much more expensive than it should be. State mandates require insurance companies to cover a variety of specialized medical services (usually at the behest of lobbyists.)"

Here are some examples of mandates that some states now require to be covered by health insurance: "in vitro fertilization, marriage therapy, smoking cessation classes, hormone replacement therapy, chiropractor visits, and so on." All of these mandates -- and there were only 252 of these 30 years ago. Now there are almost 2,000, and each new mandate raises the cost to the insurance company. If you're going to force them to cover marriage therapy or alcohol and drug abuse, if you're going to force them to cover that, what do you think is going to happen to the premiums? They have to go up. All of these mandates -- and these are just the tip of the iceberg. Once they get this whole program under their belt in Washington they're going to be mandating everything and they're going to be covering it and we're going to be paying for it. So the mandates make it "impossible for companies to offer cheap, no-frills, high-deductible plans for the young and healthy."

When 20% of the population is responsible for 80% of the health care costs, what that tells us is that we ought to offer insurance plans to the young that basically handle their catastrophes, potential catastrophes and emergencies. But not every day walks of life matters like marriage therapy or just a standard checkup visit or what have you. But we do. Now, these people that are not putting much strain on the health care system ought to be able to buy insurance policies that don't cost very much money at all, but there's no availability of those kinds of policies because of all the mandates from the states that insurance companies have to cover. And, by the way, the insurance companies don't mind because guess who's paying for the insurance in a lot of cases? The employers, the government. I tell you this whole system went south the moment the government got involved in this something like 40 years ago, because when the consumer, when the patient no longer was responsible for the bill, that was the end of it.

Imagine if we had hotel room insurance. What do you think a hotel room would cost if you didn't have to pay for it, if somebody else was? Or anything, if you had insurance for any other service, car insurance, not wreck, but just to own one, what do you think would happen to the price? When the consumer figures out that he doesn't have to pay for it, he doesn't care. When the employer is providing the insurance, the consumer doesn't care. That's why consumers now all of a sudden complain about copays and how much they do have to pay because they don't expect to have to pay anything. That's the way the whole system's been built. And you haven't seen anything yet until they get what they want.

Now, the New York Times has an interesting story today: "Doctors' Group Opposes Public Insurance Plan." This is the AMA. "As the health care debate heats up, the American Medical Association is letting Congress know that it will oppose creation of a government-sponsored insurance plan, which President Obama and many other Democrats see as an essential element of legislation to remake the health care system. The opposition, which comes as Mr. Obama prepares to address the powerful doctors' group on Monday in Chicago." But the doctors, my friends, the AMA, doesn't have a whole lot of bargaining power. And do you want to know why? The reason is, if these doctors, if the AMA get too aggressive here, they risk angering Democrats who already control their income via Medicare. This is political health care at play here. "If the doctors are too aggressive in fighting the public plan, they risk alienating Democrats whose support they need for legislation to increase their Medicare fees."

I need these statistics right in front of me and I'm not sure that it's in this particular story, but right now Medicare reimburses doctors 81%, and in some cases less. The government's already telling doctors what they can earn and what they can charge with Medicare patients, which is why a lot of doctors are opting out of Medicare. One of the reasons they want national health care is to get doctors back in it and give doctors no choice. So the 81%, and if they anger these Democrats too much, the Democrats can, "Okay, we're going to cut your pay to 60%." They could do it.

Now, we've talked about Obama and his teleprompter. The teleprompter has a website, a blog, and here's the entry for yesterday. Big Guy, meaning Obama, this is the teleprompter talking to us here on its blog: "Big Guy is pretty excited that we'll be getting to go home to Chicago next week for a speech on his health care reform plan. We'll be speaking at the American Medical Association there. It might seem like the wrong forum for Big Guy to talk about how under our health care plan we're essentially going to take money out of the pockets of doctors and make them work for free, but that's overlooking two facts. This is Big Guy. And we're doing it in Chicago. As Toes says: the doctors will like it ... or they can practice medicine at the bottom of Lake Michigan and see how well that billing system works for them."

Of course it's satire and humor, but this is founded in reality; why it's funny. So the AMA, they're not happy about this at all, but they don't have much choice because they're so dependent on Medicare for so much of their income. I'll tell you, I don't know why we believe anything Obama says. He said that unemployment would not rise above 8%. He is spending this nation into bankruptcy. He has no idea how his policy will work or any of his policies, none whatsoever. He has no idea how to pay for this. He has done nothing to fix Medicare or Medicaid. Why believe anything he says? What has he ever run? He's never run anything! All he's done is agitate people in neighborhoods in Chicago. But he's never run anything, much less successfully.

I don't want to hear about good intentions. I don't want to hear about how he's going to lower costs. He doesn't know how to do this! He doesn't know the first thing about health care. He knows about liberalism and ideology. And he knows about power. He knows about authoritarianism. He doesn't know beans about the health care business; he doesn't know anything about the car business, and he puts somebody in charge who admits he doesn't know the car business, at General Motors. He doesn't know anything. I don't know why anybody believes anything he says. He has already, with projected budget deficits for the next ten years, run up a $12 trillion debt, which is going to end up higher, actually, it always does, and yet he's not done. He's not finished.

The AMA, as I said at the opening of this program, we're now being trained, we're now being told to hate the doctors and to hate the insurance companies. This is an administration and liberalism that fosters and promotes hate to get what it wants. You watch, the AMA, they're on the front page of the New York Times, "We don't like what Obama is going to do." You watch how they're going to be characterized in the next couple days. They're going to be characterized as a special interest group only out for themselves, and they're going to pit the AMA -- doctors -- against all of you for the express purpose of getting you to hate the doctors, to put pressure on the doctors to buckle and accept Obama's plan. That's how this is going to happen. You just wait.

RUSH: These Medicare doctors, they're in the same spot as the bankers are. The Medicare doctors are in the same spot as the car company executives are. They're just like Ken Lewis. They're just like General Motors, Chrysler. They are controlled by government already and they're going to be controlled even more by government. And yet, President Obama, in Green Bay, had the audacity to say this.

OBAMA: Government can't do all of this. I'm the first one to acknowledge this. That's why I'm always puzzled when people go out there and creating this bogeyman about Obama, you know, wants government-run everything I don't want government to run stuff. I -- like I've said, I've got enough stuff to do. I've got North Korea and I've got Iran and I've got Afghanistan and Iraq. I don't know where people get this idea that I want to -- I want to run stuff or I want government to run stuff. I would -- I think it would be great if the health care system was working perfectly and we didn't have to be involved at all. That would be wonderful. That's not how it's worked.

RUSH: Ken Lewis, Bank of America chief executive, testified today in Washington and said this.

LEWIS: It is true that we were told that if we went through or -- I can't exactly remember the exact words so please give me license with word-for-word -- but basically if we went through with calling the MAC, that the government could or could remove management and the board. And I've said in the past that it was the threat -- the threat was not what gave me concern -- what gave me concern that they would make that threat to a bank in good standing. So it showed the seriousness with which they thought that we should not call a MAC, a material address change. And so as a result of that, that was a factor in our decisions because here your regulators and the federal government was saying, "We don't think calling the MAC is the best thing for you or the financial system."

RUSH: So Obama doesn't want to control anything. This is Ken Lewis basically admitting that he, Bank of America, was pressured into buying Merrill Lynch. Obama doesn't want to run anything! He doesn't want to run anything? He's not doing a thing about Iran or Afghanistan or Iraq. He is running General Motors. He is running Chrysler. He is appointing people. He's firing CEOs. What does he mean he doesn't want to run anything? Good God, folks.

RUSH: Do you remember this story from back in April? "In the past six years..." This is from the Austin American Statesman. "In the past six years, eight people from Austin and one from Luling [Texas] racked up 2,678 emergency room visits in Central Texas, costing hospitals, taxpayers and others $3 million, according to a report from a nonprofit made up of hospitals and other providers that care for the uninsured and low-income Central Texans." Nine people in six years went to one emergency room 2,600 times. This points out something that is never discussed in health care, and that is the abuse of the system by American citizens -- abuse that is paid for by everybody else.

What has become part and parcel of the whole health care debate is that we're all sick all the time. We are all justified in going to the doctor every day, because we're told every day that drinking this is going to kill us or eating that's going to prolong your risk to cancer, or we're driving too fast. We're told we're sick every day. The sun can make us sick. So people go to the doctor all the time. We never talk about curbing that. We never talk about people curbing things. We do try to get people to drive less. We do try to get people to drive smaller cars, but we don't ever tell people, "Stay away from the doctor. You're not sick!" Here are people going to the ER because there's a law in the country that says if you don't have any health insurance coverage you can still get covered at the ER.

That's why it's always been bogus to talk about the number of people without health insurance because nobody is denying medical care here, of an emergency nature. Go to the ER. We never, ever talk about those of our fellow citizens who are not little angels and victims of whatever is going on. They're a bunch of spoiled-brat, slothful, hypochondriacs who abuse the system and cost everybody a whole bunch of money. We never, ever hear that. We only hear the opposite, that everybody is sick all the time and everybody is justified to every trip to the doctor they make. (sigh) All right. I'm ... (interruption) Of course I know what I've just done. I guarantee you more people agree with me than not. How else do you get 2,600 visits from nine people to one ER over six years? What the hell else is this?

Nine people, Snerdley! Of course I know what I just said. Nine people, one emergency room, 2,678 visits in six years. Nine people! One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine people. Do I know what I just said? Not only do I know what I just said, I'm damn proud of myself for saying it. Just like we have trained a whole generation of people to not work and think they're entitled to be paid for it anyway, we have created millions of people who think they're entitled to a doctor visit every day with one sniffle, one sneeze or one cough. We've got everybody thinking that everything in life is going to kill them, that they're getting sick every day. The dangers inside the house (we just had that story) and the dangers outside the house. My God, folks, do you realize life is such a risk we all shoulda just been aborted!

Now we got a story today that maybe in a couple of billion years, the Earth might collide with Mercury. So for those of you still alive a couple billion years from now, that's another thing you have to be afraid of. And so you can develop a psychosis and go to some psychiatrist if your health care insurance covers it, because somebody told you the Earth's going to collide with Mercury in a couple billion years! See how this works? No wonder! My gosh, how many walking zombies we have in this country -- and it's not all their fault. I mean, all they gotta do is watch government-run media for one straight week, and they will hear a minimum of ten different things that are currently killing them or threatening to kill 'em. (sigh)

When the government competes with private businesses, who do you think will win?

Karl Rove: “Do you want government or a government bureaucrat standing between you and your doctor?”

And, something few people talk about—when health care is free and available, it will be abused. Here in Texas, Austin ER's got 2,678 visits from 9 people over 6 years:

RUSH: This is Mo in Columbus, Ohio. You're up first today, sir. Good to have you with us.

CALLER: Okay two -- two -- two statements, man. One, man, some real talk: I never met a Republican that wasn't racist, man. I sit back and listen to you talk about how the left and the libs, we're racist and this and this. Dude, you got it slipped around the other way, dude. I've never in my life -- and I remember Snerdley commented to me -- Snerdley, I didn't know you personally -- that I know personally in my life, and I know a lot of people, man. I never met a Republican that wasn't racist or biased about almost everything. Number two, you keep bringing up Obama's brother living in a hut. Apparently him and Obama aren't close. So you're telling me that you're cool with everybody in your family, and everybody in your family is just out there taken care of. Because I have people in my family that's homeless, and I'm not trying to help them out.

RUSH: Mo, hang on here just a second, now. You're making some very extreme statements here. You've never met a Republican that wasn't racist?

CALLER: Never met a Republican that wasn't racist in my whole life. I'm from Ohio. Never in my life.

RUSH: I think that's how you've been raised, and I think that the people that you respect as leaders have been telling you this. I think --

RUSH: Mo, Mo, I'm sorry, because that's such an extreme statement, it's not believable. There is -- it's not --

CALLER: I've never met a Republican in my life that wasn't racist. I'm not saying -- I'm not saying I dislike them or anything. That's their opinion.

RUSH: Oh, you do, sir. You really do. You don't even realize the extreme nature of that statement you just think it's common ordinary every day practice that every Republican is a racist. Clarence Thomas? Is Clarence Thomas a racist? I don't even want to get into names here with you. Now, this business about Obama and his brother and the hut. Mo, did you say you have a brother who's homeless?

CALLER: I have a brother, yeah. He lives in a shelter but I'm not -- you know, he's not going to live with me, no. He can't live with me. We're two different people and you can't get along, no.

RUSH: Good point, good point. Here's the deal here, folks. You see, Mo, your story about your homeless brother is a sad, sad thing, and it is an indication of what has gone wrong in this country. You are proud to sit here and tell me that you have a brother living in a shelter and you don't do diddly-squat for him. Do you realize in an America of 25 or 30 years ago that would not be the case? Families came together and helped people in their family who were in trouble. They didn't just sit idly by and say, "It's somebody else's responsibility." Barack Obama is a hypocrite because he has a brother living on less than $20 a year in a hut of six-by-nine feet. Barack Obama's a multimillionaire. Barack Obama's whole political identity is based on how we all need to help each other. He doesn't help his own family. All he'd have to do is send him 40 bucks and the guy would have more money than he's ever had in his whole life. So, Mo, you are what's wrong with America. Your family, you are an illustration of it. Thanks for the call.

RUSH: We talked yesterday, just as the program was ending we got the news, Stephen Hayes, at the Weekly Standard on his blog mentioned that terrorist detainees in Afghanistan are being read their Miranda rights. This signals a huge shift once again that fighting terrorism is a criminal enterprise. It brings back the old days of the way the Clinton administration went about it. But when you start Mirandizing noncitizens, especially foreign enemy combatants on the battlefield, when you start Mirandizing them, you are granting them constitutional rights when they are not citizens. Now, if you can do that, if you can grant a constitutional right and Mirandize a foreign terrorist, enemy combatant, then I guess you can automatically grant citizenship to people who are not citizens, couldn't you?

Andy McCarthy has written much about this at National Review Online, and he actually goes back and says one of the people that can be blamed for this is Senator McCain. I don't have his story right in front of me, but Senator McCain supported -- back when McCain was on his anti-torture bandwagon and was trying to curry favor with people on the left to get their votes by agreeing that the US tortured people. One of the ways that McCain sought to prevent torture and make it illegal, which it always has been anyway, was to make it possible for what the Obama administration is doing. And they did this on the quiet. It took a member of Congress finding this out. Sarah Palin warned of this in her acceptance speech at St. Paul, the Republican convention, last September.

PALIN: Al-Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America, and he's worried that someone won't read 'em their rights.

RUSH: It's exactly right. Now, Obama, on March 22nd, this year, on 60 Minutes, said this.

OBAMA: Now, do these folks deserve Miranda rights? Do they deserve to be treated like a shoplifter down the block? Of course not.

RUSH: Well, there you have it, there's Barack Obama, March 22nd, "No, they don't deserve Miranda rights." They're getting 'em. They are being Mirandized in Afghanistan today. So once again it's not what Obama says; it's how he says it that appeals to people. Yesterday this all came up at the afternoon press briefing with the most brilliant and articulate press secretary we've ever had, according to several in the government-run media. Major Garrett of Fox News said, "Do you know if it's true or untrue that Miranda rights are read to terrorists in Afghanistan?"

GIBBS: I have no reason to -- to disbelieve a member of Congress, but I don't know any of the circumstances that are involved around it.

REPORTER: Would it come as a surprise to the White House that that's what would be happening?

RUSH: Not a surprise. Yet your boss said on March 22nd that they don't deserve Miranda rights. And Gibbs says, yes, he's not surprised to him that it's happening, but that he didn't know it. So they aren't denying it. And of course it requires us to go back and find Obama saying that they don't deserve Miranda rights on 60 Minutes in March because government-controlled media is not going to do it.

RUSH: Now, these Miranda rights for terrorists: When can we expect congressional hearings on this policy? Nobody knew it was happening. The president's press secretary didn't know it was happening. When will there be congressional hearings? And I have another question. If we are going to Mirandize enemy combatants on the field of battle -- we are in a war in Afghanistan, folks. We're not there in a "police action." We're there in a war. If we're going to Mirandize terrorists, the enemy combatants, does that mean they don't have to say anything until they get a lawyer, and if they can't afford a lawyer, are we going to appoint one for them? I mean, isn't that part of the Miranda rights? So where are the congressional hearings on this?

Jake Tapper, mainstream media’s one surviving journalist, weighs in (remember, Jake is the real journalist asking real questions at the White House):

Now, this business about what he inherited drives me batty. He keeps blaming it on his "predecessor." No president has ever done that. This is childish. It is immature. It's narcissistic. Let me tell you what Barack Obama "inherited," as president of the United States. Barack Obama inherited greatness. He inherited the birthplace of the individual. He inherited the defender of liberty at home and abroad, the United States of America. He inherited American exceptionalism.

He inherited the concept of equal opportunity and the right to fail and to try again. Barack Obama, as president, inherited the financial center of the world. He inherited the country that has successfully championed capitalism and widespread prosperity. Something else that President Obama also inherited: great responsibility. He inherited the great responsibility to lead the world's lone superpower. He inherited the responsibility to preserve and to strengthen free markets. He inherited the responsibility to continue the philosophy and tradition of a country founded on Judeo-Christian morals, ethics, and principles. He inherited the Constitution of the United States. He did not inherit the right to unilaterally rewrite it or to remake it. He swore to uphold it! Barack Obama did not inherit a mess.

He inherited the United States of America, where anything is possible, where greatness has been delivered to the world time after time in the form of private sector inventions, innovations, and advancements in products that improve people's lives for over 200 years. Barack Obama inherited all of that and a country of individuals energized by their liberty, individuals strengthened by their character. Barack Obama inherited a country that liberates the oppressed. Barack Obama inherited the greatest economy in the history of human civilization. That's all. Nothing more; nothing less. There is nothing to apologize for what he inherited! He may as well be a five-year-old crybaby spoiled brat. (crying) "I inherited this mess of my predecessor." He has nothing to apologize for regarding what he inherited. There is so much to be proud of in the United States of America. There's always a lot of work to be done to preserve it and to grow it, but not in the way Obama is proceeding. Obama is destroying what others before him created. He did not inherit a mess. He has created one -- and as the mess he creates deepens, so does his blaming it on his predecessors. That is gutless. It is childish. It is immature. It is unbecoming someone who serves as president of the United States.

RUSH: What I've done here, I went back, he made a YouTube speech on January 10th. This was President-elect Obama and if you go back and you listen to President-elect Obama in January of this year selling his stimulus plan to the nation, it is hard to listen to it. Because even then there

was time to help the economy and to protect jobs. It's just five months ago and there was time to make sure that he wasn't going to do what he ended up doing. It's hard to listen to this because the opposition should have mounted in all sectors, not just here, at that point. In this address to the nation, President-elect Obama declared that he had assembled a brilliant economic team who had all the answers, and they would turn the economy around with millions of new jobs in every sector, and he said 90% of the new jobs would come from the private sector.

Barack Obama, who has never, and had never, run anything in his life, sounded self-assured -- you're going to hear it, I got sound bites. I went and dug it up -- self-assured, calm, smug, proud in this address, proud of his promises, proud of himself. His words would begin the healing, help was on the way. It was five months ago. We can now revisit his speech. We can assess the results. And remember, as a response to this obvious train wreck of a plan, we knew it back then on January 10th and we told everybody within our earshot that this was a train wreck, that this was a disaster waiting to happen, and anybody with a brain and anybody with a modicum understanding or knowledge of history knew that what he was proposing was a disaster, a literal train wreck. And that's when I wrote my bipartisan stimulus plan presented on January 29th that ended up running as an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal.

Let me take a break here. We'll come back. I broke this down into six sound bites from the January 10th Obama speech promising nirvana, promising utopia. It's just fascinating, but it's difficult at the same time to go back five months and listen, which we will do together when we come back after this brief EIB Obscene Profit Time-Out.

RUSH: You know what one of the things that Newt said last night: Obama has failed. Obama has failed. Remember when I first said I hope Obama fails? Remember how the Republican establishment cringed, "Oh, no! No, no, no! Nobody wants that," and I made the point in the interview to Hannity last week, "What in the world is so difficult to understand?" Everybody knew, everybody knew what I meant at the time. I wanted what has happened not to happen. When I say I wanted Obama to fail, I meant that I wanted what he's done not to have happened. I wanted somebody to stop it. He is destroying the US economy.

All of you people who said you want and you hope -- on our side, you hope Obama succeeds, is this what you meant? You want a destroyed economy? You want a bleak future for children and grandchildren of parents today? Do you want the United States government running and designing car companies? Do you want this? Do you want two million jobs lost since he took office (1.8 million to be precise?) Do you want an unemployment rate of over 10%? Do you want an economy that some would describe as "as bad as the Great Depression"? Is that what you wanted? Because that's what he succeeded in doing, and that was his plan. Let's go back and listen to the YouTube speech. By the way, Koko tells me we are encoding yesterday's first hour, maybe first hour and a half for YouTube. We don't know how long it's going to take, but we're going to YouTube it. We're going to get it up there. January 10th, YouTube Channel, Barack Obama, president-elect gave his weekly address. Here's a portion of his comments.

OBAMA: Our first job is to put people back to work and get our economy working again. This is an extraordinary challenge, which is why I've taken the extraordinary step of working, even before I take office, with my economic team and leaders of both parties on an American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan that will call for major investments to revive our economy, create jobs, and lay a solid foundation for future growth.

RUSH: It was an extraordinary plan. He's exactly right. It was extraordinary in that Pelosi and Reid wrote it. Let us not forget. Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi wrote his plan. The Republicans were shut out. They were not involved in writing the plan. Nobody read the plan after it was written. Millions of jobs have been lost since Obama's revival plan was passed, 1.8 million. Is what we're seeing today what he meant by "a solid foundation"? Five months ago, and people five months ago thought that circumstances today would not be what they are -- people thought that people were going to be going back to work and that people's home values were going to rise, and it isn't happening. Five months ago. Listen to this stuff. (sigh) Here's the next sound bite.

OBAMA: Families across America are feeling the pinch as they watch debts mount, bills pile up, and savings disappear. These numbers are a stark reminder that we simply cannot continue on our current path. If nothing's done, economists from across the spectrum tell us that this recession could linger for years -- and the unemployment rate could reach double digits.

RUSH: Ha! Ha-ha! You just have to laugh. Once again the straw man, "If nothing is done." Nobody was saying, don't do anything. "Economists from across the spectrum tell us this recession could linger for years, if nothing is done." Well, we did what he wanted to do, and we no longer have a recession. We have people talking about a depression now. Some of his acolytes are saying we've bottomed out and we may be seeing the end of things here. But double-digit unemployment is still in the future. "Economists from across the spectrum tell us this recession could linger for years. The unemployment rate could reach double digits." It has! Not because we didn't do anything; because Obama inflicted a plan that is causing havoc and destruction on the US economy. Then this next little bite, it's only four seconds. Listen fast.

OBAMA: It's not too late to change course, but only if we take immediate and dramatic action.

RUSH: Now, what he was describing was we gotta -- again he's dumping on Bush and dumping on his predecessors. He has made the situation worse. He did not inherit a mess; he has created one. We were not in a mess. It was all trumped up. We didn't need TARP. It was not that pressing. We didn't need all these financial bailouts. It would have been very simple to slow the slide. We had a cyclical economy. If you want to bring the economy back, you put more money in the hands of people who make the economy work -- and that's us, the American people, not put it in the hands of bureaucrats from Washington to state capitals all over the country. By the way, Oakland, California, the mayor there, Ron "Red" Dellums thinking of filing bankruptcy in Oakland, California. And, you know, when you're going to spend stimulus money on local businesses like My Muslim Bakery, is it any wonder that your town's going to go bankrupt? Once again, a liberal Democrat is running an American city into the ground with the help of Barack Obama's economic policies. Here's the next bite. We have three more to go here.

OBAMA: I asked my nominee for chair of the Council of Economic Advisors Dr. Christina Romer and the vice-president-elect's chief economic advisor Dr. Jared Bernstein to conduct a rigorous analysis of this plan and come up with projections of how many jobs it will create and what kind of jobs they will be. The report confirms that our plan will likely save or create three to four million jobs. Ninety percent of these jobs will be created in the private sector.

RUSH: So smug. He is so smug here. He has doctors working on this? They know how to save the patient? They haven't saved any jobs; they have destroyed jobs. They haven't created any jobs; they've destroyed them. Ninety percent figure is a joke. But he's so confident! He had all the answers. He still is, while he is wrecking the economy. "[A] rigorous analysis of my plan to come up with the projections of how many jobs it will create and what kind of jobs they'll be." Create or save three to four million jobs? By the way, Bill McGurn, great piece, Wall Street Journal today and a number of other people also have made this point, that this business of "saving jobs" is nothing but a political trick because it can't be calculated. It has never been calculated officially by any government agency, Labor Department or anybody else. You can't know. It's impossible to know. It's simply a way for the administration to say, even after they've lost 1.8 jobs, they've saved five. "We're doing so great we've saved five million jobs! We mighta lost five but we've saved five." Actually, we've lost 1.8. It's all a lie. It's all political BS. It's Clintonesque. No jobs are being "saved." Jobs are being lost. He has not created or saved anywhere near three to four million jobs, five months into his plan. Here's the next bite.

OBAMA: The jobs we create will be in businesses large and small across a wide range of industries, and they'll be the kind of jobs that don't just put people to work in the short term but position our economy to lead the world in the long term.

RUSH: "Jobs we create." Once again smug, false. His plan has destroyed jobs. Caterpillar! Caterpillar is the perfect example. Of all the companies, his plan was supposed to help Caterpillar. "Shovel-ready" jobs! We're going to start rebuilding roads and bridges. We need heavy equipment people to do that, so we need heavy equipment manufacturers to be working full time to build the equipment that the shovel-ready jobs are going to do. And his little announcement yesterday that we gonna start spending even faster now to create 600,000 jobs immediately, those were all short-term jobs that aren't going to lead the world in anything. The problem is, we're heading down the path we're not going to lead the world in anything. We're not going to lead the world in technology. We're not going to lead the world in science. We're not going to lead the world in medicine if this man gets his way. The Chinese are scared to death about our debt. There's another story about it today. It's a mess. Everybody involved knows this is a mess. Party loyalty and the desire for power is compromising honest analysis on the part of millions of official people in Washington who know better than to sit idly by and watch this happen.

RUSH: Last sound bite here from President-elect Obama, January 10th, this was his YouTube address to the nation.

OBAMA: And I am confident that if we come together and summon that great American spirit once again, we will meet the challenges of our time and write the next great chapter in our American story.

RUSH: He's not confident. People are confusing Barack Obama's outsized ego for confidence. His ego is such, his own messianic complex is such, he thinks that he can convince us to happily sacrifice and not oppose anything for his abject failure. His abject failure will doom the US economy. Or you might say his success in implementing his plan will lead to failure on our part. So the next chapter is being written. It's being written in red ink. This smug, inexperienced, egocentric fool has to be stopped. This has to be said now. He's had five months with no check and no balance on virtually anything he has done. He wanted nothing to do with bipartisanship all of those of you who believed that we were going to get unity. He had all the audiences. He cannot inherit a stimulus bill. He created it. He wanted it. And now our children and grandchildren will inherit Obama's deficits, high taxes and inflation.

If you listen to how he's speaking, this is again January 10th, before he was even inaugurated, he speaks as if he's going through the motions, that his real agenda has nothing to do with improving the economy, and this is what everybody knows. This is what everybody with the guts to admit it knows, that his real agenda has nothing to do with improving the economy, because history is clear on how that's done, and this isn't it. He is plowing ahead with his transformation of government regardless of circumstances, including economic conditions. He had an agenda from the day he started running for president and even prior, and whatever circumstances existed in the country were irrelevant. He's going to implement that agenda, and he's doing it, and in the process of doing it he is illustrating that his agenda is destructive. He is destroying the greatest engine of freedom that ever exists on planet Earth, and there's nobody stopping him.

Under the heading, maybe there is still some hope, there may be a Democratic mutiny on the climate change legislation:

The murderer of the security guard at the Holocaust museum hated neo-cons and may have had the Weekly Standard (a conservative magazine) in his crosshairs. This pretty much eliminates him as being some right-wing nutjob:

Transcript of Brewer and Ziegler talking about Letterman and Palin. Brewer finally orders that Ziegler’s mike be cut off:

The WSJ weighs in; again, this is why this is the successful newspaper when all others are tanking:

Since there are some links you may want to go back to from time-to-time, I am going to begin a list of them here. This will be a list to which I will add links each week.

Politico.com is a fairly neutral site (or, at the very worst, just a little left of center). They have very good informative videos at:

On Obama (if you have not visited this site, you need to check it out). He is selling a DVD on this site as well called Media Malpractice; I have not viewed it yet, except pieces which I have seen played on tv and on the internet. It looks pretty good to me.

Conservative Review
Issue #79	Kukis Digests and Opines on this Week’s News and Views	June 14, 2009