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

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

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

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

Philip Simmons, of South Carolina, a locally famous African-American Blacksmith, also passed.

Congress is attempting to push through some of the most life-changing legislation in recent memory: Cap and Trade (Global Warming legislation called the Waxman-Markey Bill), a Federal Hate Crimes Bill, Immigration Reform, and Federal Health Care Reform (which will include a federal player in the health insurance industry). After passing a huge stimulus bill and a huge budget, it is becoming apparent that President Obama is running into difficulties selling his entire agenda of radical legislation, despite his own personal popularity.

South Carolinian governor Mark Sanford reveals publically an affair with a woman in Argentina.

Iranian protestors call President Obama Ubamah, meaning he is with us. I am not certain of the spelling.

At this point in time, it appears that President Obama may sign an executive order which keeps certain prisons in Club Gitmo indefinitely.

Iran has apparently shut down public revolt, just as Obama begins to step up his rhetoric, condemning the actions of the Iranian government. Iranian diplomats have been dis-invited to the July 4^th White House barbeque.

“Government competes with the private sector like an alligator competes with a duck.” Mike Pence.

In an Obama press conference on health care, a few newsmen asked semi-penetrating questions. Charles Krauthammer remarked, “[Obama is beginning to get] pushback in the Congress, and even appeared to be getting a bit in the press today, which I think is the big story. There was defensiveness. There wasn't exactly aggressiveness on the part of the press, with a couple of exceptions. But it looked that the stupor that the press has been in for the last six months is lifting slightly.”

Regarding the Cap and Trade legislation passed in the house on Friday: “This is the biggest job killing bill that's ever been on the floor of the House of Representatives,” said House Minority Leader John Boehner.

"In our country we cannot accept that women be prisoners behind a screen, cut off from all social life, deprived of all identity," French President Sarkozy said to applause in the parliament's ceremonial Versailles home. "The burka is not a religious sign. It is a sign of subservience, a sign of debasement...It will not be welcome on the territory of the French Republic."

Obama’s view: “That is why the U.S. government has gone to court to protect the right of women and girls to wear the hijab, and to punish those who would deny it. I know there is debate about this issue. I reject the view of some in the West that a woman who chooses to cover her hair is somehow less equal.”

“3 great love affairs in world history: Romeo and Juliet, Abelard and Eloise, and the Media and this president at the moment.” George Will.

“[Obama does not care for FoxNews because] it sounds a discordant note in an otherwise harmonious chorus.” George Will.

Obama sent a letter to the Ayatollah in Iran. We know this because the Ayatollah said, “On the one hand, the US is interfering with our internal affairs and foments revolution in our streets, and on the other, they send us a letter saying they want to reestablish relations. Which is the real Obama administration?”

New York Times on the European Union's cap-and-trade program (that started in 2005): "Their plan unleashed a lobbying free-for-all that led politicians to dole out favors to various industries, undermining the environmental goals. Four years later, it is becoming clear that system has so far produced little noticeable benefit to the climate, but generated a multi-billion dollar windfall for some of the continent's biggest polluters."

Ann Coulter applied the logic which she heard from the pro-abortion side. They have said, “If you do not believe in abortion, then do not have an abortion. Just don’t put your views on us.” So Ann countered with, “If you do not believe in killing abortion doctors, then don’t kill abortion doctors.”

North Korea plans to schedule more missile launches on the 4^th of July. Are they sending delegates to the White House BBQ? I am sure that we can depend upon them to bring the fireworks.

I am beginning to like John Boehner more and more. When he began to read the 300 page amendment added to the Cap and Trade bill, he first said this (this is a short, 1.5 minute vid, half of which is Henry Waxman, after whom the bill is named):

Warren Buffet, a former Obama supporter, gives his opinion of the Cap and Trade bill:

Glenn Beck does another background video on ACORN, Barney Frank and Wayne Rathke. This is excellent.

Here is the list of the list of the Cap and Trade so called Republicans that rolled over for what John Boehner called "The biggest job's killing bill that's ever been (just in case you want to see, in 44 seconds, who you ought to vote against)...

1) I had some prospective tenants come to look at a house. They were an attractive couple from California, who both had jobs, and wanted to buy a house next year...and they receive section 8 housing. That means that, we here in Harris County help to pay for part of their rent through our taxes. Yet, somehow, they are going ot be able to save up money to purchase a house next year. You may think that we don’t spend enough on the poor, but we are spending far, far too much on the poor. By the way, I have had several section 8 recipients reject a houses of mine over the phone because they were not new enough (and my houses are in excellent condition when I lease them out).

2) Along the same lines, I had single woman come to look at one of my houses for lease. She had 3 children. The house is 2400 sq. ft., the price is $1100, and it is in excellent shape. Who is paying her bills? The state. My taxes. Wherever you live, tens of thousands of single mothers and couples have their rent partially or fully paid for, their children’s breakfasts and lunches paid for, and they usually receive food stamps (actually, a food credit card) and additional assistance. $2000–$3500/month in total benefits are typical (and above). It is not unusual for such people to have newer and nicer cars than what I drive. However, if you are in a state, like California, where there is not enough money in the budget to pay for all that politicians there think should be paid for, what do politicians threaten? Larger class sizes, teacher layoffs, police and firemen layoffs, and early-release for criminals.

3) It appears as though most people are going to have their health benefits taxed; except for some of those whose health plan was negotiated by a union.

4) I mentioned last issue about how Hillary Clinton did not know what twitter was. John McCain twitters. Jimmy Fallon suggested that McCain has this Benjamin Buttons thing going on.

5) Obama got several hours on ABC to sell his healthcare plan. Various conservative groups asked to be able to offer an alternative viewpoint; ABC said no. They offered to pay for ads, and ABC said no, saying that they do not take issue ads (which is false).

6) Throughout the campaign, and now while in office, Obama has the ability to eventually land on the right side of an issue. Now, whether this is just refining his rhetoric to tell us what we want to hear or whether he really believes what he says, is another thing. However, as president, he just does not always have the luxury of taking a stab at an issue again and again and again, until he gets it right.

7) You probably have still seen little or nothing about that $132 billion U.S. treasury note. Best case scenario, it is counterfeit. However, bear in mind, anyone can put their hands on a $100 bill and try to figure out how to duplicate it. How does one put their hand on a treasure bill to counterfeit it? You cannot just walk into the government bank of China and say, “Let me take a look at your U.S. treasury bills.” Worst case scenario is, Japan or China is beginning to quietly dump U.S. dollars.

8) Chris Dodd said over and over again this week how we have to drive down the costs of health care, which can cost as much as $12,000 a year for a family of 4. His solution? Have a government player in the system which will cost (as I showed last issue) $10,000 a year per person.

9) I do not know exactly how accurate these figures are, but I have heard similar figures from two different sources: about half of those who presently lack health care insurance will have it within 6 moths. About 95% of them will have health care insurance within 2 years (I do not know about this second figure). Many children do not have health care insurance primarily because their parents just have not gone through the paperwork to sign them up for it. Also, since 1989, illegals make up 20% increase in those without health care. I know these figures came from FoxNews, and probably from Dick Morris, but I have been unable to substantiate them elsewhere. Also, the 95% seems high.

10) Goldman Sachs and AIG both seem to have made some contributions to the Climate Change Bill; and Goldman Sachs paid out some nice bonuses this year—record bonuses for Goldman Sachs. Recall the Bush’s Secretary of the Treasury was formerly employed by Goldman Sachs (this is the Treasury Secretary that Newt Gingrich calls the worst secretary in U.S. history). And, let me remind you that GE, owners of NBC, will profit greatly by any Climate Change bill. Why will Goldman Sachs, AIG and GE get some great benefits from Climate Change legislation? Obama owes NBC, which has functioned as National Barack Corporation; and if AIG makes a nice profit (at our expense as taxpayers), Obama can justify having given them buckets of money.

11) Bernie Goldberg’s observation: one of the NY Times journalists was kidnaped, a story which the Times kept quiet, in order save this man’s life. This is exactly what the times should have done in this situation. However, when the name of a CIA interrogator became known to the Times, the CIA went to their editor and asked that his name not be printed. The same Times editor who suppressed the story of his kidnaped reporter put the CIA agent’s name on page 1. The Bush administration was having very good results with some of the methods which they began to utilize to fight terrorists; when the Times learned of these methods, Bush asked them not to print what the government was doing. The NY Times printed it all. So, when someone they know has their life on the line, the NY Times editor understands discretion. However, if it is the lives of people that they don’t know; discretion is no longer important.

12) One of the most invasive censuses ever will be administered under the Obama administration. It appears as though refusal to fill it out will result in a $5000 fine. Out of curiosity, could this be another source of revenue for our government? Am I beginning to get too paranoid here?

13) This Cap and Trade bill will, by its very nature, drive jobs overseas. If it is too expensive to do business under cap and trade, many U.S. business will simply pack up and go elsewhere, finding places with cheap labor and no cap and trade.

14) The Republican Congressmen who voted for this cap and trade bill are: Bono Mack, Castle, Kirk, Lance, LoBiondo, McHugh, Reichert, Smith (NJ). If any of these belong to you, vote them out.

15) Rush caller observation: So we're not able to judge the spirit of someone in order to determine the financial outlay that we're committing to them based on this health care standard. So we don't have the ability to quantify our empathy for this health care recipient under my new plan, but I will appoint a Supreme Court nominee who must, in even more black-and-white ways, that is applying the law, must have empathy to gray the law out. So I'm not really sure I understand the message coming from President Obama. [In other words, we cannot have doctors with empathy, but we want judges with empathy]

The Cap and Trade/Global Warming Bill was, in total, 1200 pages, 300 of which were added as an amendment on the morning the bill was passed (these pages were added 3 am Friday morning). Obviously, no one has read this bill, including Henry Waxman, whose bill this was.

94–95% of the CO₂ in the atmosphere comes from water and its interaction with the environment.

Spain, under Cap and Trade legislation, now has an 18.1% unemployment rate. 1 green job is created for every 2.2 jobs lost.

$1,300 a year is what the average Brit family pays in green taxes for carbon-cutting programs (like our cap and trade bill).

$1,870 is the estimated cost for a family of four in 2020 because of the cap and trade bill, which is now going to the Senate.

As the bill's restrictions kick in, that number will rise to $6,800 for a family of four by 2035.

The Cap and Trade legislation will possibly reduce temperatures by 0.05° C by 2050 and cost an average of 855,000 jobs per year.

So much could be done with the dramatic amount of legislation which being moved through Congress at one time. 1000 page bills being debated on for 5 hours, no one having read the bill, including the people whose names are on the bill. Big yuks.

[New Regular Feature: More than any president that I recall, President Obama tends to use language very carefully, to, in my opinion, obfuscate what he is doing rather than to clarify. This seems to part and parcel of the Obama campaign and now of the Obama presidency. This has become a mainstay of the Democratic party as well. Another aspect of this is offering up a slogan or an attack upon some villain rather than to make a clear statement or to give a clear answer.]

Obama has claimed that a public health care option will not be unfair competition and that it would not turn into a single payer system. Obama’s health care plan will cost approximately $10,000/year/person according to the CBO numbers. It would be far cheaper to just give $5000/year and let them buy their own insurance. Although this would eliminate the government health care option and twice as many people could be insured for the same money (more, if incentives were given as opposed to paying for the whole policy; e.g., $3000/person/year as a tax credit). There are many ways to do this which do not involve the government becoming a player in the game that it regulates. The legislation would be far less complex and much more transparent as well. However, the end game is, government runs health care, so the Obama plan must have a public health care insurance option. Simply insuring more people is not what Obama is after.

Will your health care bill work as well as your stimulus bill? (from Rush Limbaugh)

If you think the government health care bill will cover most everyone and that it will not cost an excessive amount.

Obama will eventually recognize that his promise to meet the rulers of Iran or North Korea without preconditions is a waste of time. He might even been coming to the conclusion as we speak.

Obama is still campaigning; it is one thing that he does well. ABC allowed him to campaign on their network.

What is being sold by a cap and trade bill is this: such a bill will lower the production of carbon emissions by requiring users of such energy to pay either another business or the government for the right to produce carbon. Proponents say that such legislation will reduce carbon emissions by making such energy usage costly.

The sheer magnitude of this bill is daunting in itself. With the 300 page amendment added Friday at 3:09 am, the entire bill is 1200 pages. The House would be allowed about 5 hours to debate a bill that no one, including those who crafted the bill, had read. Remember Obama’s promise that such legislation is going to sit on the internet for a few days so that the public can get a handle on it? Ha! Has that been done yet, even once on one important piece of legislation?

The cost to consumers here is going to be so dramatic and far-reaching, that it seems reasonable that our legislators and the public be given some time to discuss this bill. However, this was sent quickly through the House, with little or no public coverage. Obama went public to sell his health plan, and has been heavily involved in getting individual support for this bill, but how much do you know from Obama about this bill?

This bill is being touted as a creator of green jobs. Spain has a similar bill, which has been estimated to kill 2.2 jobs for every job it creates. Unemployment in Spain right now is 18.1%. Is that what we want to emulate?

The end result is, this bill brings in trillions of dollars into the federal treasury. Because of the Stimulus Bill and this year’s budget, Obama has spent a record amount of money, including a deficit 3x that of Bush’s largest deficit (which came out of a Democratic Congress). If you are going to spend a lot of money, then it might help to be able to get your hands on the money to spend. This will be a huge source of income for the government. Since passing legislation which uses the word tax would be a hard-sell right now, we have environmentally-friendly, green legislation being proposed, which, coincidentally, happens to involve huge sums of money our of the consumer’s pockets (either directly or indirectly, in the form of higher costs for food and goods and services purchased) and into the federal treasury.

What we have seen in Spain with similar legislation is great corruption when it comes to the interaction of business and government. A business wants to be seen as having a smaller carbon footprint, or having a bureaucrat justify their present carbon footprint, and this same business is much more competitive if they are not sending so much money to the government, which regulates who pays what amount. Do you suppose that there might be some kind of tit for tat here? Large donations to politicians for reduced carbon payouts. All that is needed or for a bureaucrat or a board to reduce the amount that Company A must pay, either to other companies or to the government directly.

There is the individual corruption. Nancy Pelosi, Henry Waxman, and Al Gore are all poised to make hundreds of thousands of dollars if this legislation is passed, because of their investments in green companies. Al Gore was worth a couple million when he stopped being Vice President, and, if memory serves, he is worth about $100 million today. Global warming has been very good to Big Al.

Here is what is frustrating. We all know that there is a energy source with virtually no carbon footprint, which has a small footprint, and can be very specifically designed for a variety of sizes: nuclear energy. A small, nuclear generator, about the size of an outhouse, exists today, which will power up several large neighborhoods, 24 hours a day (unlike solar and wind power). A larger nuclear plant can be developed for a city. By simply reducing the amount of restrictions which Congress has put on nuclear power, Congress can, without cost taxpayers a dime, grow jobs, grow our economy and decrease our carbon emissions almost overnight (actually, it would take a couple years). However, here is the problem: none of those things which I have already mentioned (corruption, huge government income increase, and more government control) would not be a result of reducing the restrictions on the building of nuclear plants.

Any Republican or Democrat who voted for this legislation ought to be voted out of office.

Here is what is coming, here is what will happen, and, you make the call: you have George Bush to thank (blame) for this:

Firefighters in Connecticut took an exam in order to qualify for a promotion. If memory serves, the top scorer was dyslexic and spend many hours in preparation for this test. 9 white firefighters and 1 Hispanic were the top 10 scorers. Because no Blacks scored in the top 10, this test was thrown out, and no one, apparently was advanced in the ranks. So far the lower courts have ruled that such reverse discrimination was valid. The Supreme Court will rule in favor of the white firefighters who filed this suit and allow or mandate that they be promoted according to their scores. Sotomayor, Obama’s selection for the Supreme Court, was on an appeals court which ruled against these men.

There was a movie critical of Hillary Clinton which was due to come out during her campaign. The commercials for this movie were suppressed as not being in accordance with campaign finance laws (you will recall that the Clinton’s have done whatever they could to limit release and distribution of another movie which put them in a bad light—the Road to 9/11). Apparently, they could release this movie in theaters and on DVD, but they were not allowed to run ads for it. I believe that the Court will rule that this violates free speech. This might even lay open the campaign finance reform law in such a way as to either nullify it or to require revision.

There was a 3^rd issue which involves the investigation of national banks. It appears that Obama will be working on legislation which will make this a non-issue.

There is a budget crisis in California which threatens to severely cut the amount spent on schools there.

This is what state government constantly threaten. California is known for its state workers. I do not know the percentage of state workers make up the work force in California, but it seems like half of the people I know there work for the state. Furthermore, these people are retiring with huge retirement benefits at an early age—between ages 55 and 60. They may think that their retirement is not very much, but when you figure these people are going to live for another 20-30 years, drawing that retirement, having medical benefits, something is going to break. So, rather than challenge this huge voting block, California just says, the schools have to suffer. It is what happens when you have huge chunks of California working for the government and many of them retiring with good benefits, based upon union negotiations.

Like all other states, there is a huge amount of waste with occurs in California.

There are also the greenies in California. I don’t know where things stand in the valley, but last I heard, thousand of farmers were being shut down over a little fish.

One of the solutions to the California education problem, which would save California millions, would be to vigorously pursue school choice, and let every children travel with $7000 in tax money wherever he wants to go, to whatever school will take him for that amount.

When a political party gets in power, they often do whatever it takes to solidify and perpetuate this power. Dick Morris, former Bill Clinton aide, explains how Obama is doing this (I have added some more of my own):

I have said this before, and I will keep saying it until all of you understand: it is all about power. Some men lust after it like nothing else. Once you have it, you want to increase it and make it permanent.

Localism or community diversity will be used to reduce the amount of or to even shut down TalkRadio. Local liberal activists sit on panels which review the licensing of a radio station, which time frame is reduced to every 2 years, and, if they determine that the station has not really served the community, then they fine the radio station.

Comprehensive immigration reform will be brought about so as to allow a large number of previously illegal immigrants the right to vote. This may not come directly via the legislation. The legislation may provide the right language so that voting will be decided upon in the courts.

More and more people are being moved to a category where they are not paying taxes. In fact, now there are a significant number of people who receive other peoples tax money as their tax credit. Those who pay no taxes will be upped to 60% within a year or two. Quite obviously, many of them will always vote for those who promise to give them the most stuff for free. The Democratic Party is the party of free health care, free lunch programs, welfare, etc. Increase those dependent upon the government, and that helps the party of free stuff. This is essentially class warfare.

Federal spending will be increased to such dramatic levels, along with the debt, that any responsible Republican will have to raise taxes on those who pay taxes.

The "Axis of Evil" challenges President Obama -- that is the subject of this evening's "Talking Points Memo." Two-thirds of the "Axis of Evil," Iran and North Korea, are still causing major trouble worldwide. Of course, the other third, Saddam Hussein's Iraq no longer exists.

Let's take Iran first. There's major debate over how President Obama should react to protests against the fascist government there. Many Iranian voters believe the crazy mullahs fixed the presidential election. And now protesters are risking their lives in pursuit of a new regime.

People wailing and grieving over the body of a woman, known only as "Neda" gunned down by Iranian paramilitary police.

Well, since Iran has cracked down on press coverage, we don't know what happened to that woman and we don't know how many protesters have been killed or hurt, but the number surely is into the hundreds.

So what should President Obama do? Critics of the president believe he should take a harder line, perhaps even supporting the protesters against the mullahs. But as "Talking Points" said last week, that kind of rhetoric could ignite more violence in Iraq and Afghanistan against American forces.

Also, as Henry Kissinger pointed out here on FOX News, if President Obama backs the dissenters, the mullahs will blame the protests on the USA. And some inside and outside of Iran will believe that. Thus, Mr. Obama must be cautious.

But he does have the human rights card to play. And now is the time to play it. The president should speak to the world as he did in Cairo and reiterate his belief that human beings, including women, have the right to freedom, not oppression. The president must begin to be more Reaganesque in that regard. Or risk being seen as weak and indecisive.

And that is what the North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il apparently thinks Mr. Obama is -- weak. Kim, a certified nut, is threatening the USA with a missile launch on the Fourth of July and a nuclear attack if we dare stop North Korean violations of the United Nations weapons mandates.

Right now, the U.S. warship John McCain, named after the senator's father and grandfather, tracking a North Korean vessel believed to be carrying illegal arms. Should President Obama order the Navy to board that vessel? That would definitely provoke Kim Jong Il, who would retaliate somehow. Mr. Obama knows that. It will be fascinating to see what he does.

If the president does nothing, Kim wins, taunting the president and getting away with it. But if the president orders the Navy to board, violence will likely occur. At this point, I don't believe the president of the United States can stand by and do nothing. So get ready.

Of course, many on the left will condemn Obama if he acts against North Korea. And these are his people. The committed left has elevated the president to power. So, another Barack and a hard place situation, no question.

You know why a lot of people are nervous about this health care thing? They're not getting answers.

And you know what really annoys them? The folks who are supposed to provide those answers are offended by the questions.

Answer: Of course, everything you have now and you like now, you can keep with this now.

Question: But what if my doctor is thrown into a new pool of doctors. A lot more people will want to see him now will I be standing in a longer line for him now too?

Question: Then why the hell are we changing things now if everything is fine now.

Answer: Because everything is not fine for everyone now. We need to think of them.

Answer: All things we're looking at. But in the long run it will be more efficient.

Question: The same government with the $1,000 hammers and billion dollar bridges to nowhere? That government?

And you guys wonder why I'm worried about us. It's not because I'm not getting answers. They're not even entertaining questions.

Transcript of news conference by the president, James S. Brady Press Briefing Room, June 23, 2009

THE PRESIDENT: Hello, everybody. Good afternoon, everybody. Today, I want to start by addressing three issues, and then I'll take your questions.

First, I'd like to say a few words about the situation in Iran. The United States and the international community have been appalled and outraged by the threats, the beatings and imprisonments of the last few days. I strongly condemn these unjust actions, and I join with the American people in mourning each and every innocent life that is lost.

I've made it clear that the United States respects the sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and is not interfering with Iran's affairs. But we must also bear witness to the courage and the dignity of the Iranian people, and to a remarkable opening within Iranian society. And we deplore the violence against innocent civilians anywhere that it takes place.

The Iranian people are trying to have a debate about their future. Some in Iran -- some in the Iranian government, in particular, are trying to avoid that debate by accusing the United States and others in the West of instigating protests over the election. These accusations are patently false.

They're an obvious attempt to distract people from what is truly taking place within Iran's borders. This tired strategy of using old tensions to scapegoat other countries won't work anymore in Iran. This is not about the United States or the West; this is about the people of Iran, and the future that they -- and only they -- will choose.

The Iranian people can speak for themselves. That's precisely what's happened in the last few days. In 2009, no iron fist is strong enough to shut off the world from bearing witness to peaceful protests of justice. Despite the Iranian government's efforts to expel journalists and isolate itself, powerful images and poignant words have made their way to us through cellphones and computers, and so we've watched what the Iranian people are doing.

This is what we've witnessed. We've seen the timeless dignity of tens of thousands of Iranians marching in silence. We've seen people of all ages risk everything to insist that their votes are counted and that their voices are heard. Above all, we've seen courageous women stand up to the brutality and threats, and we've experienced the searing image of a woman bleeding to death on the streets. While this loss is raw and extraordinarily painful, we also know this: Those who stand up for justice are always on the right side of history.

As I said in Cairo, suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. The Iranian people have a universal right to assembly and free speech. If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect those rights and heed the will of its own people. It must govern through consent and not coercion. That's what Iran's own people are calling for, and the Iranian people will ultimately judge the actions of their own government.

Several people have implied that what Obama said in Cairo was an influential factor on these Iranian uprisings. Yes, because he used the word freedom and the words free elections so many times in his speech (none, right?).

Also, what the news media and Obama continually ignore is, there are free Islamic countries on both sides of Iran now: Iraq and Afghanistan. Perhaps that is having a little more effect than the Obama Cairo speech?

Now, the second issue I want to address is our ongoing effort to build a clean energy economy.

This week, the House of Representatives is moving ahead on historic legislation that will transform the way we produce and use energy in America. This legislation will spark a clean energy transformation that will reduce our dependence on foreign oil and confront the carbon pollution that threatens our planet.

This energy bill will create a set of incentives that will spur the development of new sources of energy, including wind, solar and geothermal power. It will also spur new energy savings, like efficient windows and other materials that reduce heating costs in the winter and cooling costs in the summer.

These incentives will finally make clean energy the profitable kind of energy. And that will lead to the development of new technologies that lead to new industries that could create millions of new jobs in America -- jobs that can't be shipped overseas.

At a time of great fiscal challenges, this legislation is paid for by the polluters who currently emit the dangerous carbon emissions that contaminate the water we drink and pollute the air that we breathe. It also provides assistance to businesses and communities as they make the gradual transition to clean energy technologies.

So I believe that this legislation is extraordinarily important for our country; it's taken great effort on the part of many over the course of the past several months. And I want to thank the chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee,Henry Waxman; his colleagues on that committee, including Congressmen Dingell, Ed Markey, and Rick Boucher.

I also want to thank Charlie Rangel, the chair of the Ways and Means Committee, and Collin Peterson, the chair of the Agriculture Committee, for their many and ongoing contributions to this process. And I want to express my appreciation to Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer for their leadership.

We all know why this is so important. The nation that leads in the creation of a clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the 21st century's global economy. That's what this legislation seeks to achieve -- it's a bill that will open the door to a better future for this nation. And that's why I urge members of Congress to come together and pass it.

The last issue I'd like to address is healthcare. Right now, Congress is debating various healthcare-reform proposals. This is obviously a complicated issue, but I am very optimistic about the progress that they're making.

Like energy, this is legislation that must and will be paid for. It will not add to our deficits over the next decade. We will find the money through savings and efficiencies within the healthcare system -- some of which we've already announced.

We will also ensure that the reform we pass brings down the crushing cost of healthcare. We simply can't have a system where we throw good money after bad habits. We need to control the skyrocketing costs that are driving families, businesses, and our government into greater and greater debt.

There's no doubt that we must preserve what's best about our healthcare system, and that means allowing Americans who like their doctors and their healthcare plans to keep them. But unless we fix what's broken in our current system, everyone's healthcare will be in jeopardy.

Unless we act, premiums will climb higher, benefits will erode further and the rolls of the uninsured will swell to include millions more Americans. Unless we act, one out of every five dollars that we earn will be spent on healthcare within a decade. And the amount our government spends on Medicare and Medicaid will eventually grow larger than what our government spends on everything else today.

When it comes to healthcare, the status quo is unsustainable and unacceptable. So reform is not a luxury, it's a necessity. And I hope that Congress will continue to make significant progress on this issue in the weeks ahead.

Q Thank you, Mr. President. Your administration has said that the offer to talk to Iran's leaders remains open. Can you say if that's still so, even with all the violence that has been committed by the government against the peaceful protesters? And if it is, is there any red line that your administration won't cross where that offer will be shut off?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, obviously what's happened in Iran is profound. And we're still waiting to see how it plays itself out. My position coming into this office has been that the United States has core national security interests in making sure that Iran doesn't possess a nuclear weapon and it stops exporting terrorism outside of its borders.

We have provided a path whereby Iran can reach out to the international community, engage, and become a part of international norms. It is up to them to make a decision as to whether they choose that path. What we've been seeing over the last several days, the last couple of weeks, obviously is not encouraging, in terms of the path that this regime may choose to take. And the fact that they are now in the midst of an extraordinary debate taking place in Iran may end up coloring how they respond to the international community as a whole.

We are going to monitor and see how this plays itself out before we make any judgments about how we proceed. But just to reiterate, there is a path available to Iran in which their sovereignty is respected -- their traditions, their culture, their faith is respected -- but one in which they are part of a larger community that has responsibilities and operates according to norms and international rules that are universal. We don't know how they're going to respond yet, and that's what we're waiting to see.

THE PRESIDENT: I think that the international community is, as I said before, bearing witness to what's taking place. And the Iranian government should understand that how they handle the dissent within their own country, generated indigenously, internally, from the Iranian people, will help shape the tone not only for Iran's future but also its relationship to other countries. Since we're on Iran, I know Nico Pitney is here from Huffington Post.

THE PRESIDENT: Nico, I know that you, and all across the Internet, we've been seeing a lot of reports coming directly out of Iran. I know that there may actually be questions from people in Iran who are communicating through the Internet. Do you have a question?

Q Yes, I did, I wanted to use this opportunity to ask you a question directly from an Iranian. We solicited questions last night from people who are still courageous enough to be communicating online, and one of them wanted to ask you this: Under which conditions would you accept the election of Ahmadinejad? And if you do accept it without any significant changes in the conditions there, isn't that a betrayal of what the demonstrators there are working towards?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, look, we didn't have international observers on the ground. We can't say definitively what exactly happened at polling places throughout the country. What we know is that a sizeable percentage of the Iranian people themselves, spanning Iranian society, consider this election illegitimate. It's not an isolated instance -- a little grumbling here or there. There is significant questions about the legitimacy of the election.

And so ultimately the most important thing for the Iranian government to consider is legitimacy in the eyes of its own people, not in the eyes of the United States. And that's why I've been very clear: Ultimately, this is up to the Iranian people to decide who their leadership is going to be and the structure of their government.

What we can do is to say unequivocally that there are sets of international norms and principles about violence, about dealing with peaceful dissent, that spans cultures, spans borders. And what we've been seeing over the Internet and what we've been seeing in news reports violates those norms and violates those principles.

I think it is not too late for the Iranian government to recognize that there is a peaceful path that will lead to stability and legitimacy and prosperity for the Iranian people. We hope they take it. Jeff Mason of Reuters.

Q Right here, sir. Switching gears slightly, in light of the financial regulation and reform that you have made, how do you rate the performance of the Fed in handling the financial crisis? And more specifically, how do you rate the performance of Ben Bernanke, and would you like him to stay on when his term ends in January?

THE PRESIDENT: I'm not going to make news about Ben Bernanke -- (laughter) -- although I think he has done a fine job under very difficult circumstances.

I would say that all financial regulators didn't do everything that needed to be done to prevent the crisis from happening. And that's why we've put forward the boldest set of reforms in financial regulation in 75 years, because there were too many gaps where there were laws on the books that would have brought about a prevention of the crisis; the enforcement wasn't there. In some cases, there just weren't sufficient laws on the books -- for example, with the non-banking sector.

I think that the Fed probably performed better than most other regulators prior to the crisis taking place, but I think they'd be the first to acknowledge that in dealing with systemic risk and anticipating systemic risk, they didn't do everything that needed to be done.

I think since the crisis has occurred, Ben Bernanke has performed very well. And one of the central concepts behind our financial regulatory reform is that there's got to be somebody who is responsible not just for monitoring the health of individual institutions, but somebody who's monitoring the systemic risks of the system as a whole. And we believe that the Fed has the most technical expertise and the best track record in terms of doing that.

But that's not the only part of financial regulation. One of the things that we're putting a huge amount of emphasis on is the issue of consumer protection -- whether it's subprime loans that were given out because nobody was paying attention to what was being peddled to consumers, whether it's how credit cards are handled, how annuities are dealt with, what people can expect in terms of understanding their 401(k)s.

There's a whole bunch of financial transactions out there where consumers are not protected the way they should, and that's why we said we're going to put forward a consumer financial protection agency whose only job it is to focus on those issues.

Now, the Fed was one of the regulators that had some of those consumer responsibilities. We actually think that they're better off focusing on issues of broad systemic risk, and we have just one agency that's focused on the consumer protection side.

THE PRESIDENT: If you look at what we've proposed, we are not so much expanding the Fed's power as we are focusing what the Fed needs to do to prevent the kinds of crises that are happening again. Another good example is the issue of resolution authority. I think it wasn't that long ago where everybody was properly outraged about AIG, and the enormous amounts of money the taxpayers had to put into AIG in order to prevent it from dragging the entire financial system down with it.

Had we had the kinds of resolution authority, the kinds of laws that were in place that would allow a orderly winding down of AIG, then potentially taxpayers could have saved a huge amount of money. We want that power to be available so that taxpayers aren't on the hook. All right? Major Garrett. Where's Major?

Q Right here, sir. In your opening remarks, sir, you were -- you said about Iran that you were appalled and outraged. What took you so long to say those words?

THE PRESIDENT: I don't think that's accurate. Track what I've been saying. Right after the election, I said that we had profound concerns about the nature of the election, but that it was not up to us to determine what the outcome was. As soon as violence broke out -- in fact, in anticipation of potential violence -- we were very clear in saying that violence was unacceptable, that that was not how governments operate with respect to their people.

So we've been entirely consistent, Major, in terms of how we've approached this. My role has been to say the United States is not going to be a foil for the Iranian government to try to blame what's happening on the streets of Tehran on the CIA or on the White House; that this is an issue that is led by and given voice to the frustrations of the Iranian people. And so we've been very consistent the first day, and we're going to continue to be consistent in saying this is not an issue about the United States; this is about an issue of the Iranian people.

What we've also been consistent about is saying that there are some universal principles, including freedom of assembly and freedom of speech, making sure that governments are not using coercion and violence and repression in terms of how they interact with peaceful demonstrators. And we have been speaking out very clearly about that fact.

Q Are Iranian diplomats still welcome at the embassy on the Fourth of July, sir?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think as you're aware, Major, we don't have formal diplomatic relations with -- we don't have formal diplomatic relations with Iran. I think that we have said that if Iran chooses a path that abides by international norms and principles, then we are interested in healing some of the wounds of 30 years, in terms of U.S.-Iranian relations. But that is a choice that the Iranians are going to have to make.

THE PRESIDENT: That's a choice the Iranians are going to have to make. David Jackson.

Q Thank you, Mr. President. Two of the key players in the insurance industry, America's Health Insurance Plans and Blue Cross-Blue Shield, sent a letter to the Senate this morning saying that a government health insurance plan would "dismantle" private insurers. Why are they wrong? And secondly, this public plan, is this non-negotiable? Would you sign a health are bill without it?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, let's talk first of all about healthcare reform more broadly.

I think in this debate there's been some notion that if we just stand pat we're OK. And that's just not true. You know, there are polls out that show that 70% or 80% of Americans are satisfied with the health insurance that they currently have.

The only problem is that premiums have been doubling every nine years, going up three times faster than wages. The U.S. government is not going to be able to afford Medicare and Medicaid on its current trajectory. Businesses are having to make very tough decisions about whether we drop coverage or we further restrict coverage.

So the notion that somehow we can just keep on doing what we're doing and that's OK, that's just not true. We have a longstanding critical problem in our healthcare system that is pulling down our economy, it's burdening families, it's burdening businesses, and it is the primary driver of our federal deficits. All right?

So if we start from the premise that the status quo is unacceptable, then that means we're going to have to bring about some serious changes. What I've said is, our top priority has to be to control costs. And that means not just tinkering around the edges. It doesn't mean just lopping off reimbursements for doctors in any given year because we're trying to fix our budget.

It means that we look at the kinds of incentives that exist, what our delivery system is like, why it is that some communities are spending 30% less than other communities but getting better healthcare outcomes, and figuring out how can we make sure that everybody is benefiting from lower costs and better quality by improving practices. It means health IT. It means prevention.

So all these things are the starting point, I think, for reform. And I've said very clearly: If any bill arrives from Congress that is not controlling costs, that's not a bill I can support. It's going to have to control costs. It's going to have to be paid for. So there's been a lot of talk about, well, a trillion-dollar price tag.

What I've said is, if we're going to spend that much money, then it's going to be largely funded through reallocating dollars that are already in the healthcare system but aren't being spent well. If we're spending $177 billion over 10 years to subsidize insurance companies under Medicare Advantage, when there's no showing that people are healthier using that program than the regular Medicare program, well, that's not a good deal for taxpayers.

And we're going to take that money and we're going to use it to provide better care at a cheaper cost to the American people. So that's point number one.

No. 2, while we are in the process of dealing with the cost issue, I think it's also wise policy and the right thing to do to start providing coverage for people who don't have health insurance or are underinsured, are paying a lot of money for high deductibles.

I get letters -- two, three letters a day -- that I read of families who don't have health insurance, are going bankrupt, are on the brink of losing their insurance; have deductibles that are so high that even with insurance they end up with $50,000, $100,000 worth of debt; are at risk of losing their homes.

And that has to be part of reform, making sure that even if you've got health insurance now, you are not worried that when you lose your job or your employer decides to change policies that somehow you're going to be out of luck. I think about the woman who was in Wisconsin that I was with, who introduced me up in Green Bay -- 36 years old, double mastectomy; breast cancer has now moved to her bones, and she's got two little kids, a husband with a job.

They had health insurance, but they're still $50,000 in debt, and she's thinking, my main legacy, if I don't survive this thing, is going to be leaving $100,000 worth of debt. So those are the things that I'm prioritizing.

Now, the public plan I think is a important tool to discipline insurance companies. What we've said is, under our proposal, let's have a system the same way that federal employees do, same way that members of Congress do, where -- we call it an "exchange," or you can call it a "marketplace" -- where essentially you've got a whole bunch of different plans.

If you like your plan and you like your doctor, you won't have to do a thing. You keep your plan. You keep your doctor. If your employer is providing you good health insurance, terrific, we're not going to mess with it.

But if you're a small-business person, if the insurance that's being offered is something you can't afford, if you want to shop for a better price, then you can go to this exchange, this marketplace, and you can look: OK, this is how much this plan costs, this is how much that plan costs, this is what the coverage is like, this is what fits for my family.

As one of those options, for us to be able to say, here's a public option that's not profit-driven, that can keep down administrative costs and that provides you good, quality care for a reasonable price -- as one of the options for you to choose, I think that makes sense.

THE PRESIDENT: Why would it drive private insurers out of business? If private insurers say that the marketplace provides the best quality healthcare, if they tell us that they're offering a good deal, then why is it that the government -- which they say can't run anything -- suddenly is going to drive them out of business? That's not logical.

Now, I think that there's going to be some healthy debates in Congress about the shape that this takes. I think there can be some legitimate concerns on the part of private insurers that if any public plan is simply being subsidized by taxpayers endlessly, that over time they can't compete with the government just printing money.

So there are going to be some I think legitimate debates to be had about how this private plan takes shape. But just conceptually, the notion that all these insurance companies who say they're giving consumers the best possible deal, that they can't compete against a public plan as one option, with consumers making the decision what's the best deal. That defies logic, which is why I think you've seen in the polling data overwhelming support for a public plan. All right?

Q Thank you, Mr. President. Following up on Major's question, some Republicans on Capitol Hill -- John McCain and Lindsey Graham, for example -- have said that up to this point, your response on Iran has been timid and weak. Today, it sounded a lot stronger. It sounded like the kind of speech John McCain has been urging you to give, saying that those who stand up for justice are always on the right side of history, referring to an iron fist in Iran -- "deplore," "appalled," "outraged." Were you influenced at all by John McCain and Lindsey Graham accusing you of being timid and weak?

THE PRESIDENT: What do you think? (Laughter.) Look, the -- I think John McCain has genuine passion about many of these international issues, and I think that all of us share a belief that we want justice to prevail. But only I'm the president of the United States, and I've got responsibilities in making certain that we are continually advancing our national security interests and that we are not used as a tool to be exploited by other countries.

I mean, you guys must have seen the reports. They've got some of the comments that I've made being mistranslated in Iran, suggesting that I'm telling rioters to go out and riot some more. There are reports suggesting that the CIA is behind all this -- all of which are patently false.

But it gives you a sense of the narrative that the Iranian government would love to play into. So the -- members of Congress, they've got their constitutional duties, and I'm sure they will carry them out in the way that they think is appropriate. I'm president of the United States, and I'll carry out my duties as I think are appropriate. All right?

Q By speaking so strongly today, aren't you giving the leadership in Iran the fodder to make those arguments that it is about the United States?

THE PRESIDENT: Look, I mean, I think that -- we can parse this as much as we want. I think if you look at the statements that I've made, they've been very consistent. I just made a statement on Saturday in which we said we deplore the violence. And so I think that in the hothouse of Washington, there may be all kinds of stuff going back and forth in terms of Republican critics versus the administration. That's not what is relevant to the Iranian people. What's relevant to them right now is, are they going to have their voices heard?

And, frankly, a lot of them aren't paying a lot of attention to what's being said on Capitol Hill, and probably aren't spending a lot of time thinking about what's being said here. They're trying to figure out how can they make sure justice is served in Iran.

Q Mr. President, I want to follow up on Iran. You have avoided twice spelling out consequences. You've hinted that there would be, from the international community, if they continue to violate -- you said violate these norms. You seem to hint that there are human rights violations taking place.

THE PRESIDENT: I'm not hinting. I think that when a young woman gets shot on the street when she gets out of her car, that's a problem.

THE PRESIDENT: Because I think, Chuck, that we don't know yet how this thing is going to play out. I know everybody here is on a 24-hour news cycle. I'm not.

THE PRESIDENT: I answered the question, Chuck, which is that we don't yet know how this is going to play out. Jake Tapper.

Q Thank you, Mr. President. Before I ask my question, I'm wondering if you could actually answer David's. Is the public plan non-negotiable?

THE PRESIDENT: You think you're going to -- are you the ombudsman for the White House press corps? (Laughter.) What's your -- is that your question? (Laughter.)

Q Then I have a two-part question. (Laughter.) Is the public plan non-negotiable? And while I appreciate your Spock-like language about the logic of the healthcare plan, the public plan, it does seem logical to a lot of people that if the government is offering a cheaper healthcare plan, then lots of employers will want to have their employees covered by that cheaper plan, which will not have to be for profit, unlike private plans, and may possibly benefit from some government subsidies, who knows.

And then their employees would be signed up for this public plan, which would violate what you're promising the American people, that they will not have to change healthcare plans if they like the plan they have.

THE PRESIDENT: I got you. You're pitching, I'm catching. I got the question. First of all, was the reference to Spock -- is that a crack on my ears? (Laughter.) All right, I just want to make sure. No?

THE PRESIDENT: In answer to David's question, which you co-opted, we are still early in this process, so we have not drawn lines in the sand other than that reform has to control costs and that it has to provide relief to people who don't have health insurance or are underinsured. Those are the broad parameters that we've discussed.

There are a whole host of other issues where ultimately I may have a strong opinion, and I will express those to members of Congress as this is shaping up. It's too early to say that. Right now I will say that our position is that a public plan makes sense.

Now, let me go to the broader question you made about the public plan. As I said before, I think that there is a legitimate concern if the public plan was simply eating off the taxpayer trough, that it would be hard for private insurers to complete.

If, on the other hand, the public plan is structured in such a way where they've got to collect premiums and they've got to provide good services, then if what the insurance companies are saying is true, that they're doing their best to serve their customers, that they're in the business of keeping people well and giving them security when they get sick, they should be able to compete.

Now, if it turns out that the public plan, for example, is able to reduce administrative costs significantly, then you know what? I'd like insurance companies to take note and say, hey, if the public plan can do that, why can't we? And that's good for everybody in the system. And I don't think there should be any objection to that.

Now, by the way, I should point out that part of the reform that we've suggested is that if you want to be a private insurer as part of the exchange, as part of this marketplace, this menu of options that people can choose from, we're going to have some different rules for all insurance companies -- one of them being that you can't preclude people from getting health insurance because of a pre-existing condition, you can't cherry pick and just take the healthiest people.

So there are going to be some ground rules that are going to apply to all insurance companies, because I think the American people understand that, too often, insurance companies have been spending more time thinking about how to take premiums and then avoid providing people coverage than they have been thinking about how can we make sure that insurance is there, healthcare is there when families need it.

But I'm confident that if -- I take those advocates of the free market to heart when they say that the free market is innovative and is going to compete on service and is going to compete on their ability to deliver good care to families. And if that's the case then this just becomes one more option. If it's not the case then I think that that's something that the American people should know.

Q I'm sorry, but what about keeping your promise to the American people that they won't have to change plans even if employers --

THE PRESIDENT: Well, no, no, I mean -- when I say if you have your plan and you like it and your doctor has a plan, or you have a doctor and you like your doctor that you don't have to change plans, what I'm saying is the government is not going to make you change plans under health reform.

Now, are there going to be employers right now -- assuming we don't do anything -- let's say that we take the advice of some folks who are out there and say, oh, this is not the time to do healthcare, we can't afford it, it's too complicated, let's take our time, et cetera.

So let's assume that nothing happened. I can guarantee you that there's a possibility for a whole lot of Americans out there that they're not going to end up having the same healthcare they have, because what's going to happen is, as costs keep on going up, employers are going to start making decisions: We've got to raise premiums on our employees; in some cases, we can't provide health insurance at all.

And so there are going to be a whole set of changes out there. That's exactly why health reform is so important. Margaret, from McClatchy. Where's Margaret? There you are.

Q Thank you, Mr. President. As a former smoker, I understand the frustration and the fear that comes with quitting. But with the new law that you signed yesterday regulating the tobacco industry, I'd like to ask you a few questions. How many cigarettes a day --

Q How many cigarettes a day do you now smoke? Do you smoke alone or in the presence of other people? And do you believe the new law would help you to quit? If so, why?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, first of all, the new law that was put in place is not about me, it's about the next generation of kids coming up. So I think it's fair, Margaret, to just say that you just think it's neat to ask me about my smoking, as opposed to it being relevant to my new law. (Laughter.) But that's fine, I understand. It's an interesting human -- it's an interesting human interest story.

But I've said before that, as a former smoker, I constantly struggle with it. Have I fallen off the wagon sometimes? Yes. Am I a daily smoker, a constant smoker? No. I don't do it in front of my kids, I don't do it in front of my family, and I would say that I am 95% cured, but there are times where -- (laughter) -- there are times where I mess up.

And, I mean, I've said this before. I get this question about once every month or so, and I don't know what to tell you, other than the fact that, like folks who go to AA, once you've gone down this path, then it's something you continually struggle with, which is precisely why the legislation we signed was so important, because what we don't want is kids going down that path in the first place. OK? Macarena Vidal?

Q Mr. President, you're meeting today with Chilean President Michelle Bachelet. You're meeting next week with Alvaro Uribe from Colombia. Two months ago in Trinidad at the Summit of the Americas, you said that -- you called on Latin American countries to help you with deeds, not words, particularly towards less democratic countries. Have you noticed any particular progress in these two months, and can you give us examples?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, first of all, I'm very much looking forward to seeing President Bachelet. I think she's one of the finest leaders in Latin America, a very capable person. If you look at how Chile has handled the recession, they've handled it very well in part because the surpluses that they got when copper prices were high they set aside. And so they had the resources to deal with the downturn. It's a good lesson for the United States. When we had surpluses, they got dissipated.

We think that there's enormous possibilities of making progress in Latin America generally. One of the things that I'll be talking about with President Bachelet is the coordination and cooperation between the United State and Chile on clean energy. We'll have an announcement when we do our press conference after my bilateral meeting on some important clean energy partnerships.

We're making important progress when it comes to exchanges on cancer research. We continue to have a robust trade regime with Chile. And, by the way, Chile has actually entered into some very interesting partnerships not just with the federal government, but also with state governments like California.

So I think the relationship that we have with Chile -- which, by the way, does not fall in line with U.S. foreign policy on every single issue -- but it's a respectful policy. Chile is an important partner. I think that's the model that we want: partnership.

The United States doesn't dictate how Chile should view its own interests, but in fact we've achieved great cooperation. And I will be looking at President Bachelet giving us further advice in terms of how we can take the kind of relationship we have with Chile and expand that to our relationships throughout Latin America.

Q But my question is not only about that -- Chile, but about Latin American countries giving you a hand on -- against less democratic countries.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, the point is, is that I think Chile is leading by example. So I'm using Chile as an example. But the same is true in Brazil, for example. I mean, President Lula came in, and he's got a very different political orientation than most Americans do.

He came up through the trade union movement. He was perceived as a strong leftist. It turns out that he was a very practical person, who although maintains relationships across the political spectrum in Latin America, has instituted all sorts of smart market reforms that have made Brazil prosper.

And so if you take a Bachelet or a Lula, and the United States has a good working relationship with them, then I think that points the way for other countries that may be where the democratic tradition is not as deeply embedded as we'd like it to be.

And we can make common cause in showing those countries that, in fact, democracy, respect for property rights, respects for market-based economies, rule of law -- that all those things can in fact lead to greater prosperity, that that's not just a U.S. agenda, but that's a smart way to increase the prosperity of your own people.

Q Thank you, Mr. President. If I can just return to the economy more generally. When you were selling the economic stimulus package, you talked and your advisors and economists talked about keeping unemployment below 8%. Last week you acknowledged that unemployment is likely to reach double digits, being 10%. Do you think you need a second stimulus package?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, not yet, because I think it's important to see how the economy evolves and how effective the first stimulus is. I think it's fair to say that -- keep in mind the stimulus package was the first thing we did, and we did it a couple of weeks after inauguration.

At that point nobody understood what the depths of this recession were going to look like. If you recall, it was only significantly later that we suddenly get a report that the economy had tanked.

And so it's not surprising then that we missed the mark in terms of our estimates of where unemployment would go. I think it's pretty clear now that unemployment will end up going over 10%, if you just look at the pattern, because of the fact that even after employers and businesses start investing again and start hiring again, typically it takes a while for that employment number to catch up with economic recovery. And we're still not at actual recovery yet.

So I anticipate that this is going to be a difficult -- difficult year, a difficult period.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I'm not suggesting that I have a crystal ball. Since you just threw back at us our last prognosis, let's not -- let's not engage in another one.

THE PRESIDENT: But what I am saying is that -- here are some things I know for certain. In the absence of the stimulus, I think our recession would be much worse. It would have declined -- without the Recovery Act -- we know for a fact that states, for example, would have laid off a lot more teachers, a lot more police officers, a lot more firefighters, every single one of those individuals whose jobs were saved. As a consequence, they are still making their mortgage payments, they are still shopping. So we know that the Recovery Act has had an impact.

Now, what we also know is this was the worst recession since the Great Depression, and people are going through a very tough time right now. And I don't expect them to be satisfied. I mean, one thing that -- as I sometimes glance at the various news outlets represented here, I know that they're sometimes reporting of, oh, the administration is worried about this, or their poll numbers are going down there -- look, the American people have a right to feel like this is a tough time right now. What's incredible to me is how resilient the American people have been and how they are still more optimistic than the facts alone would justify, because this is a tough, tough period.

And I don't feel satisfied with the progress that we've made. We've got to get our Recovery Act money out faster. We've got to make sure that the programs that we've put in place are working the way they're supposed to.

I think, for example, our mortgage program has actually helped to modify mortgages for a lot of people, but it hasn't been keeping pace with all the foreclosures that are taking place. I get letters every day from people who say, you know, I appreciate that you put out this mortgage program, but the bank is still not letting me modify my mortgage and I'm about to lose my home.

And then I've got to call my staff and team and find out why isn't it working for these folks, and can we adjust it, can we tweak it, can we make it more aggressive?

This is a very, very difficult process. And what I've got to do is to make sure that we're focused both on the short term, how can we provide families immediate relief and jumpstart the economy as quickly as possible; and I've got to keep my eye on the long term, and the long term is making sure that by reforming our healthcare system, by passing serious energy legislation that makes us a clean energy economy, by revamping our education system, by finally getting the financial regulatory reforms in place that are necessary for the 21st century -- by doing all those things, we've got a foundation for long-term economic growth, and we don't end up having to juice up the economy artificially through the kinds of bubble strategies that helped to get us in the situation that we're in today.

Q I'm fine. Back on the economy, Mr. President, people are criticizing this road to recovery plan. Specifically, there are reports in the Washington Post that say that the African America unemployment rate will go to 20% by the end of this year. And then you had your chairman of economic advisers say the target intervention may come next year if nothing changes. Why not target intervention now to stop the bloodletting in the black unemployment rate?

THE PRESIDENT: Look, first of all, we know that the African American unemployment rate, the Latino unemployment rate, are consistently higher than the national average. And so, if the economy as a whole is doing poorly, then you know that the African American community is going to be doing poorly, and they're going to be hit even harder.

And the best thing that I can do for the African American community or the Latino community or the Asian community, whatever community, is to get the economy as a whole moving. If I don't -- hold on one second, let me answer the question -- if I don't do that, then I'm not going to be able to help anybody. So that's priority No. 1.

It is true that in certain inner-city communities, the unemployment rate is -- was already sky high even before this recession. The ladders available for people to enter into the job market are even worse. And so we are interested in looking at proven programs that help people on a pathway to jobs.

There was a reason why right before Father's Day I went to a program here locally in Washington called Year Up, which has a proven track record of taking young, mostly minority people, some of whom have graduated from high school, some maybe who've just gotten their GED, and trained them on computers and provide them other technical skills, but also train them on how to carry themselves in an office, how to write an e-mail -- some of the social skills that will allow them to be more employable.

They've got a terrific placement rate after this one-year program. If there are ways that we can potentially duplicate some of those programs, then we're going to do so.

So part of what we want to do is to find tools that will give people more opportunity, but the most important thing I can do is to lift the economy overall. And that's what my strategy is focused on.

Q Thank you. Back to Iran, putting a human face on this. Over the weekend, we saw a shocking video of this woman, Neda, who had been shot in the chest and bled to death. Have you seen this video?

THE PRESIDENT: It's heartbreaking. It's heartbreaking. And I think that anybody who sees it knows that there's something fundamentally unjust about that.

Q We also have people on the ground who have been saying that the streets are quieter now and that is because they feel that they're paralyzed by fear -- fear of people gone missing, fear of violence, that perhaps this is a movement that's gone underground or perhaps is dying. Do you have any concern over that?

THE PRESIDENT: Yes. I have concern about how peaceful demonstrators and people who want their votes counted may be stifled from expressing those concerns. I think, as I said before, there are certain international norms of freedom of speech, freedom of expression --

THE PRESIDENT: Hold on a second, Helen. That's a different question. (Laughter.) And I think it's important for us to make sure that we let the Iranian people know that we are watching what's happening, that they are not alone in this process. Ultimately, though, what's going to be most important is what happens in Iran.

And we've all been struck by the courage of people. And I mentioned this I think in a statement that I made a couple of days ago. Some of you who had been covering my campaigns know this is one of my favorite expressions, was Dr. King's expression that "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice." We have to believe that ultimately justice will prevail. All right. Thank you, guys.

My name is Ben Lieberman, and I am the Senior Policy Analyst for Energy and Environment in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation. The views I express in this testimony are my own, and should not be construed as representing any official position of The Heritage Foundation.

I would like to thank the Senate Republican Conference for extending me the privilege of participating in today's hearing. I'll be discussing the costs of the cap-and-trade approach to addressing global warming and The Heritage Foundation's economic analysis of H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (Waxman-Markey). As you know, the House is currently considering this bill, which is similar to but has more stringent targets and timetables than the Lieberman-Warner cap-and-trade bill that was rejected by the Senate last June.

It is clear that cap-and-trade is very expensive and amounts to nothing more than an energy tax in disguise. After all, when you sweep aside all the complexities of how cap and trade operates--and make no mistake, this is the most convoluted attempt at economic central planning this nation has ever attempted--the bottom line is that cap and trade works by raising the cost of energy high enough so that individuals and businesses are forced to use less of it. Inflicting economic pain is what this is all about. That is how the ever-tightening emissions targets will be met.

The only entities directly regulated by Waxman-Markey would be the electric utilities, oil refiners, natural gas producers, and some manufacturers that produce energy on site. So, the good news for the rest of us--homeowners, car owners, small-business owners, farmers--is that we won't be directly regulated under this bill. The bad news is that nearly all the costs will get passed on to us anyway.

What are those costs? According to the analysis we conducted at The Heritage Foundation, which is attached to my written statement, the higher energy costs kick in as soon as the bill's provisions take effect in 2012. For a household of four, energy costs go up $436 that year, and they eventually reach $1,241 in 2035 and average $829 annually over that span. Electricity costs go up 90 percent by 2035, gasoline by 58 percent, and natural gas by 55 percent by 2035. The cumulative higher energy costs for a family of four by then will be nearly $20,000.

But direct energy costs are only part of the consumer impact. Nearly everything goes up, since higher energy costs raise production costs. If you look at the total cost of Waxman-Markey, it works out to an average of $2,979 annually from 2012-2035 for a household of four. By 2035 alone, the total cost is over $4,600.

Beyond the cost impact on individuals and households, Waxman-Markey also affects employment, and especially employment in the manufacturing sector. We estimate job losses averaging 1,145,000 at any given time from 2012-2035. And note that those are net job losses, after the much-hyped green jobs are taken into account. Some of the lost jobs will be destroyed entirely, while others will be outsourced to nations like China and India that have repeatedly stated that they'll never hamper their own economic growth with energy-cost boosting global warming measures like Waxman-Markey.

Since farming is energy intensive, that sector will be particularly hard-hit. Higher gasoline and diesel fuel costs, higher electricity costs, and higher natural gas-derived fertilizer costs all erode farm profits, which are expected to drop by 28 percent in 2012 and average 57 percent lower through 2035. As with American manufacturers, Waxman-Markey also puts American farmers at a global disadvantage, as other food-exporting nations would have no comparable energy-price raising measures in place.

Overall, Waxman-Markey reduces gross domestic product by an average of $393 billion annually between 2012 and 2035, and cumulatively by $9.4 trillion. In other words, the nation will be $9.4 trillion poorer with Waxman-Markey than without it.

It should also be noted that the costs are not distributed evenly. Low-income households spend a disproportionate share of their incomes on energy, and thus would be hit harder than average by Waxman-Markey. Of course, the bill has provisions to give back some revenues to low-income households, but it is likely that these rebates will amount only to some portion of each dollar that was taken away from them in the first place in the form of higher energy costs and higher costs for other goods and services. Waxman-Markey also disproportionately burdens those states, especially in the Midwest and South, that still have a substantial number of manufacturing jobs to lose, as well as those that rely more heavily than others on coal for electric generation. In addition, because the bill raises energy costs, it hurts rural America much more than urban America. Rural Americans, farmers and non-farmers, spend an average of 58 percent more on energy as a percentage of income than their urban counterparts, and those costs would go up.

In conclusion, it's not surprising that support for Waxman-Markey is heaviest in those parts of the country, the urban centers in the West Coast and Northeast, that are least harmed by it. Even there, the economic damage would be bad enough, but the citizens in the rest of the country and their representatives should really be asking many tough questions about the economic impact of cap and trade. Thank you.

There are two very good videos which go along with this, found on the source page of this article:

Well, for nearly a decade, I have opened my Database 101, Computer-Assisted Research and Reporting (CARR) boot camps at the National Press Club for journalists and bloggers with a description of two of my dreams.

The first is that the day will soon come when all journalists and bloggers are as comfortable using spreadsheets and databases as they are now with dictionaries and spell-check. The second is that the day will soon come when every time a public official, think tank spokesman or individual expert claims to have a study proving X, the first question they will hear from a journalist or blogger is "May I see your datasets?"

Knowing somebody will look at your numbers and be able to point it out if you have manipulated them improperly should be a powerful disincentive to making insupportable public policy claims based on statistically flawed studies. Now, the Beacon Hill Institute at Suffolk University has just provided a sterling illustraton of that dream's immediate relevance.

As Congress debates this week the Obama-Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade anti-global warming bill, its advocates frequently claim that moving to alternative energy sources will create legions of new "green jobs." Those claims are often backed by reference to one or more of a trio of supposedly scientific studies:

* The United Nations Environment Programme, International Labor Organization, International Trade Union Confederation's Green Jobs Initiative, "Green Jobs: Towards Sustainable Work in a Low-Carbon World."

* The Center for American Progress, "Green Recovery: A Program to Create Good Jobs and Start Building a Low-Carbon Economy."

* The U.S. Conference of Mayors, "U.S. Metro Economics: Current and Potential Green Jobs in the U.S. Economy" prepared by Global Insight.

It doesn't take much time on Google to see that each of these three studies has been cited thousands of times as authoritative projections of a rosy economic future based on the government-mandated conversion of the economy from one based on fossil fuels to one in which alternative energy sources dominate.

Problem is, accoding to Beacon Hill, all three are based on fundamentally flawed reasoning. With the UN study, Beacon Hill says:

"The U.N.'s report contains the most serious economic errors of the three reports we review. It argues for radical changes in industrial and agricultural policy that would have disastrous economic consequences and would likely result in widespread impoverishment and mass starvation. It mistakenly claims that increased labor productivity results in unemployment. As a

result it advocates moving to less productive modes of transport, farming, and energy production.

:Taking people out of taxies and putting them into rickshaws, forcing people to use more labor to produce fewer crops, and doing more work to produce the same amount of energy would plunge society back to pre-modern standards of living. Humanity has advanced as productivity has increased. As the labor force has expanded so have the number of jobs to be done. The U.N. report amounts to a call for a return to the stone-age."

"The argument for the creation of green jobs should be made separately from proposals for economic recovery. This report makes a shameless effort to hijack the current crisis for purposes of creating a 'green' program that would do nothing to fix the crisis and would likely prolong it by subsidizing labor and capital to stay in some over-expanded bubble industries. If the green technology could pay for itself through cost savings as promised in the report, then the subsidies are not necessary.

"The report never performs a cost-benefit test to argue that the value created by the green jobs justifies their cost. The study uses an inappropriate input-output analysis for its forecast. And finally, the report overestimates the number of green jobs that could be created compared to alternative policies. In short, the study is a flawed attempt to justify a green subsidy program by attaching it to an economic recovery proposal."

"This report, prepared by Global Insight, never attempts to argue that the creation of jobs, green or otherwise, is good. Nor does it argue that green polices are cost-benefit efficient. It simply tries to forecast how many green jobs will be created given legislative desires and market conditions. Unfortunately, because the Conference of Mayors' leadership views the creation of green jobs as the benefit itself, the large increases in green jobs forecast by Global Insight has itself become the rationale for trying to make Global Insight's predictions a reality.

"Even if one were counting jobs as a benefit, Global Insight's work does not justify claiming any net increase in jobs. Nowhere does Global Insight analyze how the creation of green jobs will impact job (and value) creation in other sectors. More amazingly, their forecast number of green jobs is based on a single scenario with arbitrary assumptions which the report never attempts to justify. Despite its ostensible precision (4,214,700 green jobs), there is no reason to attach any weight to the forecast."

The House is expected to pass the Obama-Waxman-Markey bill tomorrow. You can bet some or all of these three flawed studies will be cited multiple times during the floor speeches and statements for the Congressional Record. Somebody should do a study of how many times they are cited!

* False Assumptions: Proponents of cap and trade point to the low cost estimates by the EPA and CBO as a reason to pass Waxman-Markey. The EPA underestimates that the bill would cost households an additional $140 a year.

* Based on Consumption: The EPA's numbers are based on consumption changes, which are typically less than income changes, as families respond to income losses by saving less.

* Uses Discounting: Discounting is a reasonable approach for comparing costs and benefits that occur at widely different times. However, costs of climate change rarely use a discounted rate this high. Without discounting, the impact per household is $1,288 in 2050. Adjusting household size to reflect a family of four raises this cost to over $1,900.

* Assumes Rebates: The EPA assumes all the allowance proceeds will be rebated directly to consumers. This clearly isn't the case, since most of the allowances have been promised to industry.

* No New Taxes?The loss that the EPA calculates doesn't include the cost of the energy tax to consumers, since the EPA assumes that all of the money is rebated. The cost of the energy tax is actually $4,600 per family of four in 2035.

* False Assumptions: CBO underestimates that the bill would cost households $175 in 2020. They assume that the carbon tax isn't a tax if the government spends the money. When have Americans ever seen all of a tax returned to them? It's like suggesting your tax rebate will be as large as the amount taken from your paycheck every year.

* Numbers Don't Add Up: The CBO's allowance cost numbers don't add up. They say the allowance price will be $28. Since there are 5.056 billion tons of CO2 equivalent in the cap that year, that implies a $141 billion gross cost. They list $91.4 billion.

* Hard to Believe: In the CBO's June 5 analysis, they projected allowance revenues of $119.7 billion, $129.7 billion, $136 billion, $145.6 billion and $152.9 billion for the years 2015-2019. It's hard to believe that the next number in that series would be $91.4 billion.

* Ignores Economic Damage: The CBO doesn't include the decrease in GDP as a result of the bill. The GDP hit in 2020 would be $161 billion (in 2009 dollars) according to our analysis. For a family of four, that is $1,870 that they ignore.

* President Obama Admitted "Electricity Rates Would Necessarily Skyrocket" Under His Cap-and-Trade Program (January 2008)

RUSH: This climate bill, I just got something and I can't look at it until the next commercial break. But I'm told here that there was a test vote this morning, the House Democrats narrowly won a test vote on ground-breaking legislation to combat global warming. This is so unnecessary, there isn't any global warming. This bill is not about climate change. It's not about improving the environment. It's not about anything but raising taxes and taking away people's freedom. Folks, we are made of carbon, and what this is is a carbon tax. Theoretically, we could be taxed because of the carbon dioxide we exhale. If they want to figure out how much that is contributing to global warming, we could be taxed on that basis. There's no limit here once you start taxing carbon. We are made of carbon. We are a carbon-based life form. What this legislation seeks to establish is that we, by virtue of our existence, are destructive polluters who have to be punished. We are polluters whether we want to be or not, because we're carbon. It is absurd. In all kinds of countries they're learning that this doesn't work. Spain, it didn't work. Australia, it didn't work.

Kimberley Strassel has a great piece at the Wall Street Journal, which I'm going to cite here in just a moment. This test vote today was 217 to 205 to send Obama and his legislation over to the full House. Thirty Democrats defected. Do you know that there was a tax for cow farts in this bill? Now, Rachel, you watched Gore's stupid movie and you bought it. I'm telling you, there was a tax on bovine flatulence. This upset a bunch of Democrat Congressmen in agricultural states. So they went in there and they removed the tax on cow farts to get the votes. This is how ridiculous it is. There are Republicans on the fence on this. There ought to be no Republicans on the fence on this. This is another one of these premises where we say: no you won't. We don't debate it. We don't say, okay, we're going to do global warming legislation. Fine, well, here's our idea. Our idea on global warming legislation is that there isn't any global warming. Sunspot activity is way, way down. I've got a NASA website series of photos to show you from 2000 to 2009 how the sun's activity has slowed down. It is cooling off all over the planet.

There is no global warming. Temperatures have not risen in the last nine years in an appreciable way and this legislation is not going to lower temperatures. It's not going to do anything they claim it's going to do. Nobody is going to have fully read this. There are over a thousand mandates, meaning limits on freedom, over 1,300 pages. Even the chairman of the committee, Henry Nostrilitis Waxman doesn't know what's all in it. It doesn't matter to him what all is in it. Yesterday I think that I heard there was something like 17,000 or 20,000 calls to Congress opposing this. It's going to take a lot more than that to stop this. Yesterday it looked like this thing is going to go down to defeat. But at like three or four this morning they offered a 300-page amendment that nobody's read. But they told the farmers, the Democrats from farm states, agriculture states, yeah, we're going to take care of you. We're going to take out some of these punitive things to get their votes. This is signature legislation and it would be very embarrassing if this goes down in defeat. They're going to have a tougher time in the Senate with it. But it would be best to shut it down in the House of Representatives today, and that's the vote, and I'm told we're going to need six to seven votes, it looks like, whereas a couple days ago it seemed to be a slam dunk. So six to seven votes on either the Republican or Democrat side to stop this.

Let me tell you something else that's happened. I read about this in a lot of different places today. What I have here is a piece from the Competitive Enterprise Institute which summarizes it pretty well. They are making public an internal study on climate science, which was suppressed by the EPA and Lisa Jackson. "Internal EPA email messages, released by CEI earlier in the week, indicate that the report was kept under wraps and its author silenced because of pressure to support the Administration's agenda of regulating carbon dioxide." There's a defector, there's somebody in the EPA who put together a report: Wait a minute, temperatures are not rising. We can't prove that carbon dioxide is a pollutant. He cited evidence from around the country; he cited scientific data. By the way, the consensus on climate science that you've always heard about on global warming, it's falling apart. It's falling apart. Scientists from Australia and two or three other countries have defected from the so-called consensus. That's what this guy's report was about. They told him to shut up. They suppressed his report and they said don't you dare talk about it. They fired him. They said don't you dare talk to anybody about this.

The point is the Environmental Protection Agency, Obama Administration, they don't care about the truth in any of this. This is not about global warming. It is not about climate change. It's about nothing but taxes. It's taxing everything they can get their hands on. It's revenue generation. Obama yesterday even had the gall to call this a jobs bill. Well, I'll tell you what green jobs did to Spain. George Will wrote about it yesterday. The stimulus bill was supposed to be a jobs bill and it didn't turn out to be a jobs bill, and this is not a jobs bill. This is a jobs-killing bill. Now, I know it's a tough sell because people listening to me talk about this: Why would our government come up and do something? Folks, I know it's hard to understand that we've elected somebody who is willingly, purposely setting out to deplete the capital in the private sector, to destroy the US economy. I know it's hard to understand. Most of you don't have, most of us -- I'll include myself in this -- most of us don't have this concept of that kind of power; of wanting it, wanting to use it for our own personal fun, frolic, frivolity, whatever. We can't imagine that we have elected somebody who really doesn't like the United States as it was founded, but that's what's happened. This is exactly what we've done here.

There was a great piece, and I had it in the stack yesterday. I thought this is a little too esoteric to get into. And I may try to find it and do it again today. It is a piece in the AmericanThinker.com by a woman from Nigeria who says: Barack Obama is no different than any other African colonial. Meaning he's a despot. The British went in and colonialized all Africa. By the way, her piece tells us why -- she doesn't say this, but if you have a basic knowledge, this piece will instruct you why Obama so often disses the UK. They went in there, they colonialized Africa and they set up despotic leaders and they end up being Marxist, Mugabe and these other guys. This woman from Nigeria thinks that's exactly what we have here, an African colonial-type president who views this country in ways unlike most Americans view this country, in ways unlike most Democrats view the country. And when I read the piece yesterday, I put it together with what he's trying to do with healthcare, what he's trying to do now with this cap-and-trade climate science, all this rotgut, what she says has a lot of credence. I'll find it. I'll share it with you as the program unfolds before your very eyes today.

Kimberley Strassel, op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, focuses on Australia's parliament's efforts to curb their own carbon emission scheme. They had the same thing. They tried to do what we are on the verge of doing. She writes about the Australian parliament's efforts to curb their own scheme due to many politicians' doubt in human causes of global warming. More and more Australian politicians are being convinced now that the human contribution to climate change, global warming, be it cooler or warmer, is something you can't factor. We don't have that kind of power. So as the global warming debate climate is shifting, the backlash has fallen on Australia and Europe and Japan. The consensus has broken down. The scientists and politicians in those countries are taking a second look and saying: Wait a minute, we don't see any evidence here that man's causing any of this, and we don't see any evidence that there's any warming going on.

Now, this is not being reported widely in the United States, but it's happening in Australia and Japan and Europe. It's happening there and the reason it's not being reported here is because, of course, our star is Al Gore and the United Nations. The media goes out and they smear any

dissenters. After listing scientists from all over the world who are skeptical of manmade global warming, Kimberley Strassel writes this: "The collapse of the 'consensus' has been driven by reality. The inconvenient truth is that the earth's temperatures have flat-lined since 2001, despite growing concentrations of C02. Peer-reviewed research has debunked doomsday scenarios about the polar ice caps, hurricanes, malaria, extinctions, rising oceans. A global financial crisis has politicians taking a harder look at the science that would require them to hamstring their economies to rein in carbon," and they're deciding around the world they don't have the desire and it makes no sense to put even more stress on their economies to reduce carbon when there's no evidence that more carbon is harming anything, bottom line.

Our official climatologist here, Roy Spencer at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, sent me a note last night. Let me find it in the stack here. It's about fish. They're finding that fish ears are growing because of carbon dioxide in the ocean. Remember all the horror stories that we have seen over the years about deformed frogs at birth and we have been told this is due to global warming and their ecology all out of whack. We find out that that's not the case, and the left-wing BBC is nonetheless the source: "Scientists think they have resolved one of the most controversial environmental issues of the past decade: the curious case of the missing frogs' legs. Around the world, frogs are found with missing or misshaped limbs, a striking deformity that many researchers believe is caused by chemical pollution.

However, tests on frogs and toads have revealed a more natural, benign cause. The deformed frogs are actually victims of the predatory habits of dragonfly nymphs, which eat the legs of tadpoles. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, researchers started getting reports of numerous wild frogs or toads being found with extra legs or arms, or with limbs that were partly formed or missing completely. The cause of these deformities soon became a hotly contested issue."

It had to be caused by global warming, this and that. And people said, no, no, this is happening naturally. They were debunked and then called deniers and so forth. But they have now proven that these deformed frogs are simply nature taking its course. Nothing to do with man. Nothing to do with us. The cap-and-trade bill will probably tax dragonflies once they learn about this.

RUSH: One thing that you need to know about this test vote that the AP, the State-Run Media is talking about all over is the test vote is designed to make you think it's all over. The test vote is designed to make you say, "Oh, it's too late now! I can't do anything about it." That's not true. This thing is still up for grabs. I've got two different lists here of Republicans and Democrats on the fence. One's from Red State and I don't know where the other one's from. But they're a little different from one another. And there are too many names here to give out. Let's go with the short list, the Republicans. Here are the last names of the Republicans on one of the list. Some of these names I don't see on both lists so we'll do the best we can here. But these are the Republicans that are on the fence about it -- and there ought to be no Republicans "on the fence."

This is nothing to do with saving anything. This is nothing to do with global warming. It is nothing to do with saving the climate or saving the planet or saving the polar bears. It is nothing to do with that. The problems that this legislation claims to address do not exist. Well, to the extent that some problems exist, they are not caused by us. Regulating our behavior, changing our behavior, limiting our freedom will not have any effect on whatever climate changes are or are not taking place out there. It's just that simple. So we can argue about this. We can debate the merits of it all day long, but just in an ideological or philosophical way, this is a no-brainer, a non-starter. It is unnecessary. It is a pure power and money grab by the same people in Washington who have been grabbing power and money since Obama was inaugurated.

Now, according to the Washington Post: Rep. Collin Peterson, a Democrat from Minnesota -- he's the agricultural committee chairman -- "said he was not sure what the offset program would look like: 'The truth is, nobody knows for sure how this is going to work.'" This is a Democrat chairman of the Ag Committee talking about cap and trade. Nobody knows how it's going to work! Nobody's read the full thing. Waxman has admitted he doesn't know what's all in it. All they know that's in it that matters to them is tax increases, limitations on liberty and freedom and Washington regulating more and more of the behavior of the American public. That's what's attractive. Here are some Republican names on the short list that I'm told are on the fence. Buchanan in Florida. Gerlach in Pennsylvania. I forgot how to pronounce this rookie's name C-a-o in Louisiana. Chow? Cho? I'm not sure how. Johnson in Illinois. Ehlers in Michigan. Kirk in Illinois. Frelinghuysen in New Jersey and Smith in New Jersey. Those are the Republicans on the short list of on the fence.

RUSH: I'm told the pronunciation of Mr. Cao's name, the rookie -- the guy that replaced Congressman William Jefferson (Democrat-Louisiana) -- is "cow." Regardless, some people are asking, "Is there a number on this bill, Rush?" Yes. H.R. 2454. Look, all you have to do is call your member of Congress. In fact, I'm now told there are a million and a half calls yesterday, not 17,000 to 20,000. Some of those million and a half calls yesterday were about healthcare as well, I'm sure. But regardless. H.R. 2454. The message is, "No, we won't!" It's just very simple: "No, we won't!" Obama's out there saying, "Yes, we can." The answer is, "No, you won't. No, we won't." Here's more from the Competitive Enterprise Institute analysis: The report finds that EPA, by adopting the United Nations' 2007 'Fourth Assessment' report, is relying on outdated research and is ignoring major new developments. Those [new] developments include a continued decline in global temperatures..."

And you know by virtue of your own life global temperatures are not rising. If you live in the Northeast, you live in Chicago, you live in the upper tier of states, you know you're barely... You haven't seen summer yet and it's June 26! "Rush, you can't use this anecdotal stuff." BS! Reality is reality. Global warming is not happening. The polar ice caps are not shrinking! At any rate, "developments include a continued decline in global temperatures, a new consensus that future hurricanes will not be more frequent or intense..." We know that. We've had fewer hurricanes since that bad year of including Katrina. New findings are that "water vapor will moderate, rather than exacerbate, temperature." The point is that this old "consensus" we've all heard about for all these years, "A consensus of scientists agree global warming is appearing..."

You can have no consensus in science. It's not up for vote, it's not up for an opinion. But whatever. That consensus was so-called preferred scientist software even falling apart now. "All of this demonstrates EPA should independently analyze the science, rather than just adopt the conclusions of outside organizations." Now, this is what the Competitive Enterprise Institute writes. That's not the point. "EPA should independently..." The science is irrelevant to the EPA! They don't want to analyze the science. It's not that they're accepting science from outside sources; they're accepting a political conclusion from outside sources. This whole issue is nothing but politics and it has been nothing but politics since I first heard of it in 1980. Back in 1984 -- I've told you the story -- I was watching This Week with David Brinkley and there was some global warming alarmist on named Oppenheimer. "We've got 20 years, George!" he said to George Will.

"We've got 20 years. If we don't get in gear fast the oceans are going to rise." Twenty years? Well, 20 years was 2004. It's 2009 and everything's hunky-dory. All of this is just absurd. The EPA is not relying on science. Everything that Barack Obama has taken control of is pure politics. It is purely political, 100%. So to ask the EPA to look at different science? They just suppressed an internal report from one of their own employees. It says, "What you guys are doing is wrong. They said shut up. Don't tell anybody about this," and they fired the guy. "Shut up. You're not going to get out there." Anything that contradicts the political desire -- and the political desire here is power, control, regulation of human behavior, the weakening of the US economy all for the benefit of the creation of more power for Obama and his minions. So, it's down-to-the-wire time on all this. And again here's the short list of Republican Congressmen and women who are on the fence on this the legislation H.R. 2454.

Buchanan in Florida. Gerlach in Pennsylvania. Cao in Louisiana. Johnson in Illinois. Ehlers in Michigan. Kirk in Illinois. Frelinghuysen in New Jersey. Smith in New Jersey. Now, there's a lot of Democrats on the fence, way too many to name here. Heath Shuler from North Carolina is one. But he's not on both lists. Here's the short list of Democrats. Altmire from Pennsylvania. Bright from Alabama. Dahlkemper from Pennsylvania, Driehaus from Ohio. Ellsworth from Indiana. Kissell, North Carolina. Kratovil, Maryland. Paul Kanjorski, Pennsylvania. Minnick in Idaho. And Teague from New Mexico. That's the short list of Democrats apparently on the fence. That test vote you're hearing about, if you have heard about it, it was 217 to whatever it is. They need 218 to pass this. That's the majority. The test vote's designed to make it look like they've got it and to dispirit people from opposing it. That's not the case.

RUSH: You know they call this the Waxman-Markey bill but they should call it the Madoff-Waxman-Markey bill. Put Madoff's name in this bill because this bill is a con game. It promises what it cannot deliver.

Kimberly Strassel’s article at the WSJ (I watch her weekly on FoxNews, and she is great; and you need to read this article):

George Will examines Spain’s economy and its relationship to their own cap and trade legislation (if you want some stats, this is the article for you):

RUSH: "Obama, the African Colonial" This is by L.E. Ikenga. This is LE Ikenga. She is a first-generation American, and she absorbed the African culture from her parents. This is a special piece, and I'm going to read most of it to you here. It's at the AmericanThinker.com. "Had Americans been able to stop obsessing over the color of Barack Obama's skin and instead paid more attention to his cultural identity, maybe he would not be in the White House today. The key to understanding him lies with his identification with his father, and his adoption of a cultural and political mindset rooted in postcolonial Africa. Like many educated intellectuals in postcolonial Africa, Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. was enraged at the transformation of his native land by its colonial conqueror," the UK, and that means that Barack Obama, Jr. is likewise enraged and we see it in the way he frequently disrespects the UK.

"But instead of embracing the traditional values of his own tribal cultural past, he embraced an imported Western ideology, Marxism. I call such frustrated and angry modern Africans who embrace various foreign 'isms', instead of looking homeward for repair of societies that are broken, African Colonials. They are Africans who serve foreign ideas." May I translate this for you? This is L.E. Ikenga, a first-generation American, but she absorbed the African culture from her parents. The Brits go in and colonize Africa. Africans get enraged about it in trying to resist it, and then when the Brits leave, rather than trying to reform their country back to their own cultural roots, people like Barack Obama, Sr. turn to Marxism rather than their own roots to rebuild nations that were once colonized by the UK.

This is how we get Nigeria. This is how we get Mugabe and Zimbabwe (which used to be Rhodesia), and this is what Barack Obama, Sr. became: an African colonial. "Before I continue," she writes, "I need to say this: I am a first generation born West African-American woman whose parents emigrated to the US in the 1970's from the country now called Nigeria. I travel to Nigeria frequently. I see myself as both a proud American and as a proud Igbo ... Politically, I have always been conservative (though it took this past election for me to commit to this once and for all!); my conservative values come from my Igbo heritage and my place of birth. Of course, none of this qualifies me to say what I am about to -- but at the same time it does.

My friends, despite what CNN and the rest are telling you, Barack Obama is nothing more than an old school African Colonial who is on his way to turning this country into one of the developing nations that you learn about on the National Geographic Channel," meaning he wants to turn this into a Third World country. And when you look at cap and trade, when you look at the stimulus, when you look at the healthcare proposals he's got, I mean the only way to turn this into a Third World nation -- if that's possible, but the only way to try to do it, the only way to try to do this -- is to just attack the private sector and deplete it of its resources, of its money and capital, which is exactly what he's doing.

"Many conservative (East, West, South, North) African-Americans like myself -- those of us who know our history -- have seen this movie before. Here are two main reasons why many Americans allowed Obama to slip through the cracks despite all of his glaring inconsistencies: First, Obama has been living on American soil for most of his adult life. Therefore, he has been able to masquerade as one who understands and believes in American democratic ideals. But he does not. Barack Obama is intrinsically undemocratic and as his presidency plays out, this will become more obvious." Well, it's already obvious to us. All these czars that have no accountability to legislative forces? They are not approved by Congress like cabinet secretaries are. He's announced 13 or 14 czars. He's running the car companies. He's running the mortgage and banking business. He's done this without the process of Democratic legislation.

He's just declared it fiat, and his party is in power in the House so they're letting him do this. "Second, and most importantly," she writes, "too many Americans know very little about Africa. The one-size-fits-all understanding that many Americans (both black and white) continue to have of Africa might end up bringing dire consequences for this country. Contrary to the way it continues to be portrayed in mainstream Western culture, Africa is not a continent that can be solely defined by AIDS, ethnic rivalries, poverty and safaris. Africa, like any other continent, has an immense history defined by much diversity and complexity. Africa's long-standing relationship with Europe speaks especially to some of these complexities -- particularly the relationship that has existed between the two continents over the past two centuries. Europe's complete colonization of Africa during the nineteenth century, also known as the Scramble for Africa, produced many unfortunate consequences, the African colonial being one of them."

RUSH: I want to continue reading here from L.E. Ikenga: "Obama, the African Colonial," from the AmericanThinker.com: "The African colonial (AC) is a person who by means of their birth or lineage has a direct connection with Africa. However, unlike Africans like me, their worldviews have been largely shaped not by the indigenous beliefs of a specific African tribe but by the ideals of the European imperialism that overwhelmed and dominated Africa during the colonial period. AC's have no real regard for their specific African traditions or histories. AC's use aspects of their African culture as one would use pieces of costume jewelry: things of little or no value that can be thoughtlessly discarded when they become a negative distraction, or used on a whim to decorate oneself in order to seem exotic. (Hint: Obama's Muslim heritage)," is one of these examples.

"On the other hand, AC's strive to be the best at the culture that they inherited from Europe. Throughout the West, they are tops in their professions as lawyers, doctors, engineers, Ivy League professors and business moguls; this is all well and good. It's when they decide to engage us as politicians that things become messy and convoluted. The African colonial politician (ACP) feigns repulsion towards the hegemonic paradigms of Western civilization. But at the same time, he is completely enamored of the trappings of its aristocracy or elite culture." She's pegging Obama here, just pegging him. He's totally caught up in the trappings of aristocracy or elite culture, taking the plane up to New York, flying the kids over to Paris. This is the stuff about the job he loves, he's enamored of it.

"The ACP blames and caricatures whitey to no end for all that has gone wrong in the world. He convinces the masses that various forms of African socialism are the best way for redressing the problems that European colonialism motivated in Africa. However, as opposed to really being a hard-core African Leftist who actually believes in something, the ACP uses socialist themes as a way to disguise his true ambitions: a complete power grab whereby the 'will of the people' becomes completely irrelevant. Barack Obama is all of the above. The only difference is that he is here playing (colonial) African politics as usual. In his 1995 memoir, Dreams From My Father -- an eloquent piece of political propaganda -- Obama styles himself as a misunderstood intellectual who is deeply affected by the sufferings of black people, especially in America and Africa. In the book, Obama clearly sees himself as an African, not as a black American. And to prove this, he goes on a quest to understand his Kenyan roots. He is extremely thoughtful of his deceased father's legacy; this provides the main clue for understanding Barack Obama.

"Here are a few examples of what the British did in order to create (in 1914) what is now called Nigeria and what Obama is doing to you: One: Convince the people that 'clinging' to any aspect of their cultural (tribal) identity or history is bad and regresses the process of 'unity.' Two: Confiscate the wealth and resources of the area that you govern by any means necessary in order to redistribute wealth. Three: Convince the masses that your upper-crust university education naturally puts you on an intellectual plane from which to understand everything even when you understand nothing." Pegs Obama to a T. "Four: Lie to the people and tell them that progress is being made even though things are clearly becoming worse." Pegs Obama to a T. This woman from Africa, first-generation American, identifying what an African colonial is: the despot leaders that take over these countries and how they do it. And she's defining Barack Obama. Lie to the people. Tell them that progress is being made even though things are clearly becoming worse.

"Five: Use every available media outlet to perpetuate the belief that you and your followers are the enlightened ones and that those who refuse to support you are just barbaric, uncivilized, ignorant curmudgeons." Well, that speaks for itself, too. She concludes: "America, don't be fooled. The Igbos were once made up of a confederacy of clans that ascribed to various forms of democratic government. They took their eyes off the ball and before they knew it, the British were upon them. Also, understand this: the African colonial who is given too much political power can only become one thing: a despot."

I share all this with you because she's nailed who the guy is. Americans look at Obama, first black president, and they go, "Oh we're shedding some of our guilt here. Look at how enlightened we are, what a great country we are," when in fact we've elected somebody who is more African in his roots than he is American. Loves his father who was a Marxist, and is behaving like an African colonial despot and you can see it in his healthcare legislation, the stimulus bill, taking over automobile companies, the czars that he has that are not accountable to anybody but him and now the climate bill. All of this is about nothing other than the acquisition of power and the ability to further regulate your privacy and behavior.

RUSH: Apparently the Capital switchboard and individual members' telephone lines are being inundated. You can't get through. E-mail boxes are full. Voicemail messages are full. People are not answering the phones. Busy signals. Don't let that deter you. Keep trying. The Waxman-Markey bill is a disaster. It's not about saving the planet. It's not about saving the climate. It's not about anything, folks, other than raising taxes and redistributing wealth. The Heritage Foundation, www.AskHeritage.org, has put together a fabulous analysis of this bill and they have summarized it in a great, understandable way. I found it because I'm a member at AskHeritage.org. It costs only 25 bucks. You can spend more if you want to if you like the cause and want to donate to it. But AskHeritage.org is a single site, a single resource -- other than me. I realize a lot of you use me as your primary resource, and that's fine. The Heritage Foundation is just a superb place as well.

"Later today, the House of Representatives is slated to vote on the most convoluted attempt at economic central-planning this nation has ever attempted: cap and trade. The 1,200-plus page Waxman-Markey climate change legislation is nothing more than an energy tax in disguise that by 2035..." Think your children, and this is independent of any other market forces that are going to affect the prices of these items as a mental list here. This bill alone will raise gasoline prices by 58 percent by 2035. This bill alone, in addition to whatever increases there are in gasoline between now and then, this bill will raise natural gas prices by 55 percent by 2035. It will raise home heating oil prices by 56 percent, and electricity prices by 90 percent.

Your electricity bill, by 2035, is going to go up by 90 percent. If we didn't do this bill, I guarantee you your bill is not going to go up 90 percent between now and 2035. "Although proponents of the bill are pointing to grossly underestimated and incorrect costs, the reality is when all the tax impacts have been added up, the average per-family-of-four costs rise by $2,979 per year. In the year 2035 alone, the cost is $4,609," for a family of four, additional taxes on energy. Energy, of course, is how we move, how we get around, how we heat our homes, cool them, run our refrigerators. Basically energy is one of the building blocks of our advancing lifestyle. "And the costs per family for the whole energy tax aggregated from 2012 to 2035 are $71,493." In other words, the bill's slated to go into effect 2012, and if you add up all of these costs for a family of four from 2012 to 2035, you've got to come up with $71,493 that you otherwise wouldn't have to.

"But on second thought, cap and trade is much more than that. It kills jobs." The Heritage people have analyzed this. "Over the 2012-2035 timeline, job losses average over 1.1 million. By 2035, a projected 2.5 million jobs are lost below the baseline (without a cap and trade bill). Particularly hard-hit are sectors of the economy that are very energy-intensive: Manufacturers, farmers, construction, machinery, electrical equipment and appliances, transportation, textiles, paper products, chemicals, plastics and rubbers and retail trade would face staggering employment losses as a result of Waxman-Markey," this bill. "It's worth noting the job losses come after accounting for the green jobs policymakers are so adamant about creating. But don't worry, because the architects of the bill built in unemployment insurance," too.

You want to hear how that works? They know that the bill is going to cream you! Listen to this. Section 432, Energy Refund Program For Low Income Consumers: "(1) The Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, or the agency designated by the Administrator shall formulate and administer the 'Energy Refund Program'. (2) At the request of the State agency, eligible low-income households within the State shall receive a monthly cash energy refund equal to the estimated loss in purchasing power resulting from this Act." Now, this is just for the poor. Pay attention. This is a part where the poor get direct deposit transfers of your money. They know your "purchasing power" will be lost resulting from this act! I'm reading from the act.

Let me read this again: "(1) The Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, or the agency designated by the Administrator shall formulate and administer the 'Energy Refund Program'. (2) At the request of the State agency, eligible low-income households within the State shall receive a monthly cash energy refund equal to the estimated loss in purchasing power resulting from this Act." They intend to raise prices on energy. They intend to make you use less of it. They intend for you to be less mobile. They intend for you to be less comfortable. They intend for you to have less disposable income. Disposable income is liberty! Disposable income is freedom. They intend for you to have less of it. What's an "eligible household"?

Well... "Participation in the Energy Refund Program shall be limited to a household that (B) has gross income that does not exceed 150 percent of the poverty line. ... (c) Monthly Energy Refund Amount -- "(1) Subject to standards and an implementation schedule set by the Administrator, the energy refund shall be provided in monthly installments via -- (A) direct deposit into the eligible household's designated bank account." Barack Obama and the Democrat Party intend to just "direct deposit" your money into the bank accounts of the poor because of their "loss of purchasing power" due to the passage of this act. Your loss of purchasing power is not going to be compensated. In addition to paying these new taxes, you are also going to be redistributing or have redistributed your wealth to the poor.

It's straight out of Barack Obama. This is who he is, what he wants to do. This is a redistribution scheme. This is an attack on achievers. It's an attack on wealth disguised as something to get to your heart by convincing you that voting for this, supporting this is somehow going to save Woody Woodpecker, Peter Polar Bear, Flipper and deformed frogs. Not to mention your own child's climate. They don't even have the guts to call this a carbon tax. So much for transparency! So much for liberal straight talk. It's a carbon tax. They're taxing carbon. We're a carbon-based life form. We inhale carbon dioxide. This bill says that we are polluters by virtue of breathing, which we have no choice about, by the way. We can't stop, as long as we're alive. They could tax us on that basis. It just is absurd. They ought to call this Waxman-Markey-Madoff, because it's a con game. It promises what it cannot deliver.

It cannot change the climate and it certainly is not going to bring about more jobs. He called it a "jobs bill" yesterday. Mr. President, tell us how many. How many jobs is this going to cost us? Now, you rattle off all these new jobs, but how about the existing jobs that we're going to lose? How many more jobs will be lost than the jobs created? George Will yesterday: "The Spanish professor is puzzled. Why, Gabriel Calzada wonders, is the US president recommending that America emulate the Spanish model for creating 'green jobs' in 'alternative energy' even though Spain's unemployment rate is 18.1 percent -- more than double the European Union average -- partly because of spending on such jobs?" The Spaniards have tried it. They've got 18.1% unemployment. The Australians tried it; they're seeing the light. The Japanese are seeing the light. Spanish professor: Why is Obama doing this when he can see it hasn't created any jobs. The net job action is a loss, and he's not going to tell us how many jobs are lost.

"Calzada, 36, an economics professor at Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, has produced a report that, if true, is inconvenient for the Obama administration's green agenda, and for some budget assumptions that are dependent upon it." The professor "says Spain's torrential spending -- no other nation has so aggressively supported production of electricity from renewable sources -- on wind farms and other forms of alternative energy has indeed created jobs. But Calzada's report concludes that they often are temporary and" these jobs, in order to be created "have received $752,000 to $800,000 each in subsidies..." In other words, that's how much it costs to create a job so you can go out and say, "Heyyyy, look at the job we created!" This is what it costs per job in Spain: 800 grand.

"[W]ind industry jobs cost even more, $1.4 million each. And each new job entails the loss of 2.2 other jobs that are either lost or not created in other industries because of the political allocation ... of capital," of money. Deplete the private sector, existing energy sources. Turn it over to these new inventors. You lose jobs when you take money from existing private sector businesses. There is no market, there is no technology yet to do wind and support ourselves. So you have to subsidize these businesses and hire these people, and in Spain it costs $1.4 million to hire new employees. It's total insanity, and that's why this Spanish professor cannot understand why Obama's going through with this.

"(European media regularly report 'eco-corruption' leaving a 'footprint of sleaze' -- gaming the subsidy systems, profiteering from land sales for wind farms, etc.)," but Professor "Calzada says the creation of jobs in alternative energy has subtracted about 110,000 jobs elsewhere in Spain's economy" -- elsewhere. So all these new jobs -- these new green jobs and all the costs to get them, produce them -- has lost 110,000 jobs elsewhere in Spain's economy and that's why they are at 18.1 percent. "The president's press secretary, Robert Gibbs, was asked about the report's contention that the political diversion of capital into green jobs has cost Spain jobs. The White House transcript contained this exchange: Gibbs: 'It seems weird that we're importing wind turbine parts from Spain in order to build -- to meet renewable energy demand here if that were even remotely the case.' Questioner: 'Is that a suggestion that his study is simply flat wrong?' Gibbs: 'I haven't read the study, but I think, yes.' Questioner: 'Well, then. (laughter.)'

"Actually, what is weird is this idea: A sobering report about Spain's experience must be false because otherwise the behavior of some American importers, seeking to cash in on the US government's promotion of wind power, might be participating in an economically unproductive project." The administration wants you to think that what's happening in Spain is simply an aberration, it isn't true, and we can go ahead and import ideas from Spain. "Windmills are iconic in the land of Don Quixote, whose tilting at them became emblematic of comic futility. Spain's new windmills are neither amusing nor emblematic of policies America should emulate. The cheerful and evidently unshakable confidence in such magical solutions to postulated problems is yet another manifestation -- Republicans are not immune:

"No Child Left Behind decrees that by 2014 all American students will be proficient in math and reading -- of what the late senator Pat Moynihan called 'the leakage of reality from American life.'" There is no reality in this. The reality is out there for us to see around the world. We're ignoring it. That's what's at stake with this legislation. And I know it's hard for a lot of people to believe that their fellow citizens, elected officials would do something this destructive. If you don't understand modern-day, left-wing, statist-oriented Democratic Party, if you don't understand -- and you can't. I mean, I don't. I can't relate to having the desire, that much power to control people's lives, to limit other people's freedom. I can't relate to it. I understand it through history. I understand it's horrible.

I don't want somebody having that kind of power over me. A lot of people can't understand that there are actually Americans, a significant number of them in electoral power, that have that desire. Well, they do, and the evidence is all around you in just the first six months of this administration. All you've got to do is open up your eyes and admit it. It's as plain as day. You can stay in denial as long as you want, and as long as you stay in denial the more disposable income you're going to lose and the more of your hard work and income produced from it is going to be transferred to somebody else who doesn't deserve it...and for what? How does that benefit you or somebody else? How does it benefit the US economy? It doesn't. It destroys it. President Obama, "Yes, we can!"

RUSH: Let's go to one of the most interesting exchanges in the infomercial last night. And ABC's Jake Tapper, in describing this, says: "President Obama struggled Wednesday to explain whether his health care reform proposals would force normal Americans to make sacrifices that wealthier, more powerful people -- like the president himself -- wouldn't face. The probing questions came from two skeptical neurologists" during the ABC News infomercial on Obama healthcare reform. And the first question that we're referring to here is Dr. Orrin Devinsky. He's a New York neurosurgeon. He asked this question of President Obama: "If your wife or your daughter became seriously ill and things were not going well and the plan physicians told you they were doing everything that could be done and you sought out opinions from some medical leaders in major centers and they said, 'There's another option that you should pursue,' but it wasn't covered in your plan, would you potentially sacrifice the health of your family for the greater good of insuring millions, or would you do everything possible as a father and husband to get the best healthcare and outcome for your family?"

Let me translate the question. A neurosurgeon asked Obama: "Okay, you've got the healthcare plan that you're going to prescribe for everybody else. Your wife or your daughter comes down with a major illness. Your plan goes through the diagnosis. And then you find out that there's some other doctor out there somewhere with another procedure and another form of treatment, another opinion, but your plan doesn't cover it. Are you going to stick with the plan you forced on everybody else, or are you going to use your wealth and go outside the plan to get the treatment for your wife and daughter that other people are not going to be able to do because they don't have the money?'' That's the question. He did not answer it. Obama: "You're absolutely right. That if it's my family member, uh, if it's my wife, if it's my children, if it's my grandmother, I always want them to get the very best care. But here's the problem that we have in our current healthcare system, is that there is a whole bunch of care that's being provided that every study, every bit of evidence that we have indicates may not be making us healthier."

All he did there was admit: "Yeah, I want the best healthcare possible." Well, so the hell does everybody else! That wasn't the question. The question was: "Are you going to go outside the plan that you have prescribed for everybody?" See, the dirty little secret is he's going to be exempt from the plan, as are all members of Congress. The question was a good one: "Are you going to go outside the plan if you find a better doctor, better treatment that your plan doesn't cover?" "You're right. I'd go get the best care I could. I want the best care." Then comes this irrelevant, non sequitur answer: That we have a bunch of care that's being provided that may not be making us healthier. Folks, I'm telling you, the answer to this question you need to focus on: Obama is looking to cut healthcare. He's looking to cut it because that's the only way he can keep costs where they are or reduce them, which is not going to happen anyway. We have the best healthcare system in this country and he's going to restrict access to it, as a means of saving money.

That's the only way he can do it. So he wouldn't answer the good doctor's question. The answer to the question is, for President Obama: "Yeah, I'm going to use the wealth I've acquired and I'm going to go get the best treatment I can." But the vast majority of Americans will not be able to do that because they aren't going to be able to afford it. They're going to be stuck in a plan that doesn't everything they might need, and Obama's answer is: "Well, maybe you don't need the treatment. Maybe you don't. Maybe your quality of life is such you don't need it anyway. We'll save money." Next question. Member of the audience. Jane Sturm: "My mother is now over 105. But at 100, the doctors said to her, 'I can't do anything more unless you have a pacemaker.' I said, 'Go for it.' She said, 'Go for it.' But the specialist said, 'No, she's too old.' But when the other specialist saw her and saw her joy of life, he said, 'I'm going for it.' That was over five years ago. My question to you is: Outside the medical criteria for prolonging life for somebody who is elderly, is there any consideration that can be given for a certain spirit, a certain joy of living, a quality of life, or is it just a medical cutoff at a certain age?"

Obama: "I don't think that we can make judgments based on people's 'spirit.' Uh, that would be, uh, a pretty subjective decision to be making. I think we have to have rules that, uh, say that, uh, we are going to provide good quality care for all people. End-of-life care is one of the most difficult sets of decisions that we're going to have to make. But understand that those decisions are already being made in one way or another. If they're not being made under Medicare and Medicaid, they're being made by private insurers. At least we can let doctors know -- and your mom know -- that you know what, maybe this isn't going to help. Maybe you're better off, uhh, not having the surgery, but, uhh, taking the painkiller." Do you realize how cold and heartless that answer is? This woman is asking about her mother. And everywhere she went, except one doctor, refused to put in the pacemaker. "Nah, she's too old; she's going to die anyway."

So they found a specialist: "Maybe this woman really loves living. I'll put it in." She's lived five years with the pacemaker, and still Obama: "Maybe you're better off to tell your mother to take a pill, take a painkiller." See, we have to have rules. "We have to have rules. Your mother should have died five years ago, lady. She would have been better off taking that painkiller." Who says we have to have his rules? The President of the United States is not a king. He's not an autocrat. He's not a ruler. He doesn't get to set the rules. Obama has taken it upon himself to do so. This woman found a way to get her mother a pacemaker. With Obamacare, you just heard the answer: It wouldn't have happened. I know how this stuff works.

The hospitals are under pressure to free up beds. If they think somebody's terminal, get them out of there. I understand how all this works. But we're not talking about a terminal woman. We're talking about a woman who needed a pacemaker. "I don't think we can make judgments based on people's 'spirit.' That would be a pretty subjective decision to be making." Maybe not if the government's in charge. That's the whole point. What about if families... Do not families have the right to judge the spirit of their fathers and mothers and family members? Of course! Do we want to have a cold, cruel, unfeeling government saying, "Spirit doesn't matter to us"? That's exactly right. Obama wants you... The best way to put it, and it's working, is he's trying to kill spirit. All this hope and change? He's trying to kill it. You know how many frustrated Americans there are out there at what's happening?

This Sanford business. I've got to tell you one of the first thoughts that crossed my mind with Mark Sanford. This is the first thought: "What he did defies logic." This is more than being 180 degrees out of phase because of lust or love. To split the scene for five days, and we know he's been separated -- and he knows, by the way, that the newspaper in his state has the e-mails between him and his concubine there in Argentina. He knows this. He knows that somebody knows what's going on. He knows his wife knows. So he ups and leaves for five days. He doesn't leave anybody in charge of the state in case there's an emergency. This is almost like: "I don't give a damn. The country is going to hell in a handbasket and I just want out of here." He had just tried to fight the stimulus money coming to South Carolina. He didn't want any part of it. He lost the battle.

He said, "What the hell? The federal government's taking over. What the hell? I want to enjoy life." One of the first things I thought, now today he's saying he doesn't want to give up office, he wants to stay in office. (sigh) But even Charles Krauthammer said last night: this is like self-inflicted political suicide. And it certainly appeared to be. The point is there are a lot of people whose spirit is just broken. They're fed up with it and saying, "To hell with it. I don't want to fight it anymore. I just want to get away from it," and here's Obama admitting: "Well, we can't start making judgments based on people's spirit." Imagine if we had had presidents in the past who said we couldn't make judgments on any number of political issues using "people's 'spirit.'" It's the American exceptionalism the spirit-can-doism that built the country. Spirit's everything. Energy, desire, get-up-and-go. Ambition! The woman's mother had ambition to live. She just needed a pacemaker. It didn't matter. She should take a painkiller! I'm telling you, this is a coldhearted, ruthless guy. Not a cool, calm, and collected one.

RUSH: A couple more bites on this infomercial. It was an embarrassment to what used to be a great news organization, ABC. And, again, it came in last in its time slot last night; the 10 p.m. time slot, it was last. Obama is not the big ratings draw that everybody thinks. Obama fatigue is settling in. If they wanted people to watch, they should have had me on. Anyway, one of the techniques that the State-Run Media is using to support Obama is to try to demonize (even further) the insurance companies.

And lo and behold, they had a guy from Aetna Insurance in the audience last night. Here's Diane Sawyer asking Obama for permission to question a CEO of Aetna.

SAWYER: If I can reverse the order a little bit, Mr. President, I'd like to ask a question of him and then let you comment on his answer."

SAWYER: Mr. Williams, Aetna, to take one, an insurance company. We hear all over the country people see their premiums going up 119% in the last several years. They see the profits of the insurance companies in the billions and billions of dollars. Even in a lean year, they see profits in the billions of dollars. Is the President right that you need to be kept honest?"

RUSH: Oh, now, this wasn't an infomercial, was it? This wasn't a stacked deck. "Is the President right, you people are a bunch of greedy SOBs? They can profit. Who the hell do you think you are making profits?" She wouldn't know the first thing about the risks anybody in the insurance business takes. She doesn't pay for her own health care, either. So let's bash the insurance companies. This is CEO Ronald Williams, Aetna president and CEO. This answer is one of the few things that made sense on ABC last night.

WILLIAMS: It's difficult to compete against a player who is also the person who is refereeing the game. And so I think in the context of thinking about a government plan, what we say is: "Let's identify the problem we're trying to solve. Let's work collaboratively with physicians, hospitals, and other health care professionals, and make certain that we solve the problem as opposed to introduce a new competitor who has the rule-making ability the government would have."

RUSH: See, he is right on the money, and this is the thing that nobody's paying any attention to. Obama is saying, "Hey-ey-ey. You know, our public option is going to be subject to the same rules that the private sector is." No, they're not, because Mr. Obama's plan doesn't have to make a profit, and Obama has already established himself as the referee, as Mr. Williams said. Obama says, "I'm going to sit here and I'll allow you to keep your doctor. I'll allow you to do that." Who the hell is he to "allow" us to do anything? He's not a king. He's not a dictator. He's the president. So after this answer, the brilliant Obama gives his rebuttal and calls this guy "Mr. Walters" instead of his name, "Mr. Williams."

OBAMA: First of all, I want to say that, uh, Mr. Walters (sic) has been very cooperative. We've been having a series of conversations, and I appreciate the constructive, uhh, manner in which we've been, uhh, uhh, trying to work together. Uh, but I -- I just want to make clear that, uh, the government, whatever rules it provides to insurers, a public plan would have to abide by those same rules. So we're not talking about an unlevel, unequal playing field. We're talking about a level playing field.

RUSH: This is absurd. This is outrageous. The rules? "Whatever rules government provides to insurers, a public plan would have to abide by the same rules." These are the same rules that are going to be applied to making cars. The same rules that are going to be applied to mortgages and so? What is this? Can the private plans raise taxes? No, they can't. In fact, private insurers cannot go out and raise taxes to defray their costs, but Obama can. It's not a level playing field and it never is. The government doesn't ever have to make a profit. Another thing they can do is print money if there's a shortage of it. Mr. Williams over at Aetna can't do that. All right. To the phones. People have been patiently waiting. We'll start with Steve in Fort Lauderdale, who is in residence, and he has a reaction to Obama's show last night. Hi, Steve. Thank you for waiting.

CALLER: A couple points I wanted to make. The first one, Obama's assertion that doctors are ordering more and more tests to get more and more compensation is ridiculous. I'm compensated to see and to treat a patient regardless of what I order. But I am having to order more and more tests to protect my backside.

CALLER: So we should be talking tort reform, not driving down the cost of health care.

RUSH: You can forget tort reform, just like you can forget union reform, because the tort lawyers are the second biggest contributing base besides the unions, after the unions, to Democrats and Obama. You're absolutely right. They order all these tests to cover themselves in case some patient wants to sue them for misdiagnosis or something.

CALLER: That's exactly right. And you have to. Not only is it to protect yourself financially, but also three strikes in Florida, I'll be bagging groceries.

CALLER: It's gone through various stages, but if you lose so many malpractice cases, you can lose your license -- and I'm not talking about gross negligent things.

RUSH: Yeah. And how hard is it to get a jury impaneled these days that's going to hate the doctor, hate the insurance company and award some schlub gazillions of dollars because somebody misdiagnosed a pimple?

CALLER: Because they want to be the next schlub that gets the next million dollars.

CALLER: The other point I wanted to make if I have the time with you is him talking about "specialists." Now, I'm in a specialty residency. And he's saying that we need to try to drive more of the compensation to the general practice folks. I think it's going to be a wash in the end without that. I'm carrying about $300,000 of student loans that's going to be accruing interest for the next five years. The people who have already graduated and are out practicing, they're not. They're also gaining a nice income at this point, when I'm not. So for him to say that somebody's doing it just for money and we need to try to compensate the general practice people more because too many people want to do certain things...

RUSH: All that means, there's a way to translate that, too. He wants more people to go to a GP rather than specialists. Forget the why. This is what he's having to do to ostensibly "cut costs." So you have the President of the United States telling private citizens who want to be doctors where they can go and where they can't go. It's exactly out of the Hillary plan, by the way.

If you are thinking of moving back into stocks and mutual funds, read this first:

RUSH: From the Financial Times: "Growing pessimism about the prospects for a global economic recovery sent stock and commodity prices tumbling on Monday while new data showed that leading US corporate executives were cashing out of their share holdings at a rapid pace. US government bond yields followed equity prices lower, confounding analysts who had expected that Treasury rates would rise this week as the federal government auctioned off a record $104bn of debt. Analysts said the market mood was captured by a World Bank report that said the global economy would contract 2.9 per cent this year, compared with a previous estimate of a 1.7 percent fall." Contraction, for those of you in Rio Linda, means it gets smaller.

"A White House spokesman said later in the day that the US unemployment rate was likely to rise to 10 per cent in the next couple of months. The downbeat commentary reinforced the view that investors should be more worried about the impact of economic weakness on corporate profits than the possibility of higher inflation and interest rates. ... Executives in charge of the largest US companies sent a signal of their concerns by selling far more shares than they bought this month, according to data based on Securities and Exchange Commission filings." So pessimistic executives are cashing out their shares. People are starting to say screw it, I want to enjoy, I want to enjoy life, and they're in the process of destroying it.

RUSH: As we discussed at the top on the program, guess what just...? It's happening now. Obama is in the stupid Rose Garden, pushing the energy bill. They're panicked. They've got to get this done tomorrow. There's a bunch of wavering Democrat votes on this thing. It's by no means a lock. The president went out there and said something that's just not true. He said that whoever leads the world in new green technology will lead the global economy. Talk to Spain about it. Spain has tried to go all green. It has been a debacle. I tire. I tire of having to deal with the lies, the misrepresentations. He also said that his energy program... He bashed oil. We're too dependent on it. We're jeopardizing our national security.

We're not jeopardizing our national security by having an oil-based economy! If we do not have an oil-based economy, we are not going to be secure. It's just that simple. He also said that this is a jobs bill. We already did a jobs bill. It's called the stimulus package. And how is that working out for you? (sigh) I'll tell you, this whole procedure here that is underway is just about ramming as much down our throats as possible before we have any idea what it is.

Now, one on the things on the energy bill, if I may jump to that. One on the things that's under assault in Obama's energy proposal here is the coal industry, and he has made no secret about this. I've got all kinds of stories here in my stack from yesterday and from today on wind energy. Do you know that producing energy from wind is far more expensive than energy from coal? And one of the reasons is we can't guarantee wind every day.

The second thing is we have no way to store wind-harnessed energy. We use it as it happens. Coal, of course, is stored energy. Wind energy. And, by the way, it doesn't work. It's been tried. There's no great new technology out there that is going to produce this Nirvana with wind energy. There's a reason. Can we take a little common sense here? There is a reason our electrical needs are satisfied primarily by coal. We have some gas and some nuclear thrown in, but there's a reason most of our power plants use coal. Do you know what it is? Take a stab, Snerdley. (interruption) Mmm-hmm. Mmm-hmm. Mmm-hmm. It's because of all the mechanisms out there to create energy, it's the cheapest; it's the most dependable. Now, the Obama people would have you believe that the only reason we use coal is because of Big Coal, that we have this massive coal industry made up of a bunch of people who want to screw you left and right.

And they want to kill you left and right. Remember, in Obama's view, this country is immoral and unjust. And the big success stories in the American private sector are nothing more than cheats, liars, frauds. But there's a reason we use coal. It's cheap. It's dependable. There's no deep, dark secret about this. It's not because of Big Coal or Big Oil or Big Nuclear have cooked up some nefarious scheme to enslave us to their product. It's because long before the current crop of crazy environmentalists whackos were even a gleam in their ponytailed father's eyes or a dream of their hair-in-the-armpit mothers, the market answered the question about the best way to provide for the electrical needs of the nations. And these are the choices that won: coal, oil, nuclear. They won because the market decided they were the best! It was not because of some nefarious scheme forcing these horrible products on us.

You know, when Mr. Ponytail Guy or Ms. Hair-in-the-Armpits Woman had their little kids and they're thinking about changing the world for the better, the people that were making the world work did not decide on wind or solar. They decided on coal, because it was cheap, it was dependable, and it worked. No, the robber barons did not foist anything on us, as Obama says. The real dirty secret of wind power is that you only have power when the wind blows, and we don't have the ability to store wind power for later use. You know what it would take to do that? (snorts) A giant Energizer Bunny battery. Of course they're bad news, too. They're horrible. Your little hybrid you're driving around in? Bat-ter-ry! What do you think powers your battery when you plug it in and charge it up, which you're going to have to do to it some day? You're going to plug it into some windmill turbine?

We cannot yet bring different power sources on and off the electrical grid just based on the whimsy of the weather. We don't have the ability to just throw a switch. "Okay, we've got wind! Turn off the coal-fired plant and turn on the windmills." We don't have that ability. There's much more involved in getting electricity to your house than most people realize, and the people who have made it possible did it in the market and the market always decides if you leave it alone. And you know what? We can't build power lines from one end of the country to the other to solve intermittently with wind because electrical power is limited by range of transmission. Maybe one day we'll overcome all these technological challenges, but those breakthroughs are not in our lifetime. I mean, we haven't even reached a corner or turned a corner and we see the possibility.

We're not even at the corner yet. We're looking at a mirage. We're looking at oasis in the desert. We're wandering around the desert thinking that we're killing ourselves with oil and coal and nuclear power and we're just wandering. We haven't had anything to drink for a couple of days in the desert and we see a mirage out there. We see a windmill. And that's all Obama's green energy program is, is a mirage. Now, all these technological challenges to making windmills work and all this rot gut they're thinking about, it's going to be hugely expensive. That's the allure to Obama. That's why General Electric is big on this stuff. They know they're going to be getting a bunch of government money to develop and work on these projects without having to sell a single dishwasher, microwave oven, or jet engine.

Think of this. Think of starting today to build an electrical grid designed specifically for wind, because that's what we're going to have to do to make wind effective. That will end up being the true cost of wind energy. But basically we'll just scrap coal and we're going to do a do-over? We're going to start from scratch? Now, you compare that cost against the real case scenarios or the effects of global warming, you realize that no rational person would believe wind power is any kind of a logical choice. Besides which, wind farms are ugly and everywhere they end up being, people start complaining about the noise they make! Even one guy... I saw a story a couple weeks ago. One guy put up a little windmill somewhere in his backyard, and the noise from it drove his neighbors crazy. All of this is just a panacea, pie-in-the-sky promise that's based... Follow the money. It's simply based on money and Obama's sick desire to autocratically rule a country.

Let Freedom Ring, a non-profit, grassroots organization that supports a conservative agenda, announced an initiative today urging members of Congress to sign a pledge to read and give citizens the opportunity to read any health care reform legislation before voting on it.

Cap and Trade is the biggest tax increase in US history (these are heart-stopping articles; do not read them if you are faint of heart):

The Wall Street Journal on Cap and Trade bill, which against shows why more people are moving away from most newspapers, but not from the WSJ:

What Cap and Trade will give us and what it will cost us (another outstanding article):

Unions and environmentalism; if you belong to a union, it is okay to be less concerned with the environment:

Here is the kind of biased coverage this cap and trade bill is receiving from AP:

A handful of undecided Democrats hold the key to whether the House will confront global warming and begin a shift away from fossil fuels to cleaner sources of energy.

Most of you know how some farmers are paid millions not to grow anything. There will be those who own property with trees who will be paid not to cut any of these trees down. Isn’t America great? From the Cleveland Plain Dealer:

Outstanding article: what a good health care policy might look like and how it can be developed:

Some stats and clear-thinking about the Obama-merical on ABC for government-run health care:

Over and over again, you hear that we are not spending enough money on our students, because they are our future. Not true. Excellent WSJ article (what are we paying and what are we getting):

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.

This is an outstanding website which tells the truth about Obama-care and about what the mainstream media is hiding from you:

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 #81	Kukis Digests and Opines on this Week’s News and Views	June 28, 2009