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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

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.

It comes out that there were, during the Bush administration, discussion about using CIA operatives to kill high-value targets (terrorists). Democrats are presenting this as being a negative thing.

During a recent Guantanamo Bay trial of several terrorist, one sent a paper airplane flying toward a fellow conspirator during the trial proceedings.

Al Franken has gotten into the Senate just in time to query Sotomayor about her recollection of Perry Mason episodes.

Greta Susteren, after listening to Obama telling Michigan that many of these jobs are not coming back. “If jobs aren’t coming back to Michigan, according to Obama, why did we spend so much money on GM and Chrysler?”

Joe Biden: "You’re telling me we gotta go spend money to keep from going bankrupt? The answer is, yes, that’s what I’m telling you.."

Joe Biden: “Everywhere I go I see workers are rehired, factories are reopened, cops are on the streets, [and] teachers are in the classrooms.”

I should mention that many Joe Biden quotes cannot be found anywhere except on FoxNews, where Joe is generally seen on film saying these things. Most mainstream news organizations do not want you to know that Biden says a lot of stupid things.

Paul Gigot, explaining why many businesses seem to have allied themselves with Barack Obama, and are sitting down with him to brainstorm: “If we are not at the table, then we are on the menu.”

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad promised that, once this election was behind him, "I have told the enemies ... that this nation ... will strike you in the face so hard you will lose your way home."

Democrats have recently been launching some sort of an investigation into the Cheney kicking around with the CIA the idea of using covert operations to kill terrorist leaders. Nina Easton commented, “[The public is asking] aren’t we supposed to be killing members of Al Qaeda?”

Joseph Stiglitz, writing for the Guardian UK, said, “It has long been recognised that those America's banks that are too big to fail are also too big to be managed.”

From a Rolling Stone article: "That's the essence of the bailout: rich bankers bailing out other rich bankers, using the taxpayers' credit card."

Ahmadinejad continues to make threats toward America and he disparages the way that we have interfered in his election.

Glenn Beck on Goldman Sachs. This is a little disorganized, but give this video at least 2 minutes, where Beck begins to lay out who is who and how this relates to Goldman Sachs and the government:

CNN anchor, who did not realize that Bush was extremely popular in Africa, got an answer that he did not expect:

I don’t know if it has been posted yet, but the Wall Street Journal on FoxNews debated banning the burka (inspired by Nicolas Sarkozy); I list this because I find it hard to take a side on this one.

There is another video out there, which I could not find, but it was talking head after talking head after talking head telling us that the Obama Stimulus plan would work immediately, and that it needed to be passed immediately.

1) I watched a little of the Sotomayor hearings. The Republicans I saw did a reasonable job. I found it interesting that Sotomayor opens up with a statement that the courts do not make the law, and then commented on the right to an abortion as being settled law. It would be as if the courts decided that any mother can kill her child up until age 1. I am not looking at this from a moral standpoint but simply from a legal one. Would it be right for the courts to suddenly rule that any mother, under the implied right to privacy, to be able to kill any child of theirs as long as he is less than 1 year old?

2) One of the best questions for Sotomayor went like this (approximately): can you explain the history of how a clearly laid out right in the constitution, e.g., the right to bears arms, is under attack by some courts; and yet, rights which are not found in the constitution, e.g., the right to get an abortion, is something upheld by the courts.

3) Diane Feinstein, California Senator, called Sotomayor’s comments about a wise Latina in-artful (the favorite word of Democrats when you take them at their word), and Sotomayor tried to walk this back as well. The president’s press secretary said that she misspoke. Now, I am fine with that, had this been a one-time off-the-cuff remark. However, this comes from written speeches made my Sotomayor on several occasions. If a judge is unable to write with forethought what they mean to say, what are they doing functioning as judges, where reading and writing the English language is a fundamental requirement of the job.

4) It is fascinating that former CEO of Goldman Sachs, Hank Paulson, was made Treasury Secretary, and then he lets 2 Goldman Sachs’ competitors go out of business (Bear Sterns and Lehman Brothers), during a time of great bailouts (Glenn Beck pointed this out). Just recently, Goldman Sachs showed record profits and paid out huge bonuses, but, for some reason, ACORN did not protest this time around.

5) The newspapers want to make us think that things are improving now. Headlines on the Sacto Bee’s front page today “70 Deputies’ Jobs Saved” and “Falling costs give consumers a lift” in an article about falling gas prices. This was the same Bee which gave little or no coverage to the huge Sacramento Tea Party.

6) As you examine all of Obama’s proposals, remember, he has never run anything in his entire life.

7) Obama got exactly what he wanted when he wanted when it came to the stimulus package. You need to decide for yourself whether he knew what he was doing or whether he had no idea what he was doing. In either case, why should we trust him on any piece of important legislation? The stimulus package should have been something which provided for jobs and the economy. This affects the lives of many families. Again, he either has no clue or he got a bill passed which intentionally did no good. What could be more important than jobs and the economy during an economic downturn?

8) Title IX, passed back in 1972, sought to have some sort of gender parity in college athletics. Universities which do not have an equal number of male and female athletes competing in inter-collegiate games could lose their federal funding. As a result, some teams at some colleges have been disbanded. The Obama administration has recently proposed a similar plan to bring gender parity to the college classroom. At this point, there is nothing set in stone and there are no regulations yet. However, if this Title IX approach reduced some sports programs, perhaps it will do the same for some science and math programs as well.

9) California, New York and New Jersey have been mostly run by Democrats and liberals over the past 2 decades. They have the highest taxes, the highest unemployment, the highest debt, strong health care regulations, high insurance costs, high levels of uninsured, with a higher percentage of union workers.

10) The CBO (the Congressional Budget Office) has determined that Obama-care will increase medical costs.

11) If you had any political awareness back in the 80's, you will recall the Reagan’s economic plan, called trickle-down economics was slandered and called voodoo economics. His idea was, when the rich are making a lot of money, that money is going to trickle down into the rest of the economy. We know that as businesses, large and small, expand, they hire more people; and when people have jobs, they are able to spend money in the economy. That is trickle down economics and there is nothing wrong with the concept. Obama is attempting to do just the opposite. He is taking money away from the rich and giving it to the poor, and expecting it to percolate up. He and his talking heads have also said that, for every dollar of spending in the stimulus, that will (somehow) produce a $1.50 worth of economic activity. Now, that is voodoo economics. Both ideas are silly and are proving to be false.

12) If newspapers did what they are supposed to do, then you would have seen on your front page how Cap and Trade and how Obama-care is going to affect your finances. However, for most of you, your newspaper has no interest in informing you of anything.

The stimulus bill is sending $69/person to 872 counties that voted for Obama, and $34/person to 2234 countries which voted for McCain. No idea if there are more counties than this which are receiving aid.

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann came close to cracking the top ten, having attracted 1,159,000 viewers during the second quarter.

28% of the nation's voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President.

Biden talking about how well the stimulus package is working. Perhaps this could take place inside of an unemployment office, and Biden can point to all of the newly hired government workers to process the increased unemployment numbers.

Max Baucus of Montana, complains that Obama's opposition to paying for it with a tax on health benefits "is not helping us."

Another Democrat, Rep. Dan Boren of Oklahoma, tells his local newspaper that Obama is too liberal and is "very unpopular" in his district.

There are 52 blue-dog Democrats who have some sense in the realm of fiscal responsibility. Will they hang tough?

[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.]

Although Obama pushed the Stimulus through Congress quickly, where there was not enough time to even read it, because we had to act immediately; now he is pretending that the Stimulus Bill was always a long-term plan.

Government health care will save money. I hope that even my most liberal friends do not believe that.

You have said that your proposals to the health industry are going to be fiscally responsible and cost-cutting. Can you give some examples of legislation which you have gotten through already which is fiscally responsible and cost-cutting?

You think that the only people who do not want government health care are the big insurance companies.

I think that Obama could be handed his first defeats in the Senate with regards to his Public Health option bill and his Climate Change bill.

I spent 6 days in California, and I asked several knowledgeable people two things: (1) Environmentalists appear to be at war with some Californian farmers, which has destroyed many farms in central California. (2) TEA (Taxed Enough Already) parties, as Sacramento had one of the larger TEA parties in the United States.

I asked this of people who watch the news on tv and who read newspapers. Every person I asked about these things were educated people; most of them with a college education. These are people with, in their own view, intelligent and informed opinions. I talked to people who think about and have opinions on political issues of today. These are not apathetic people.

My cousin in Fresno knew about the farmland thing, and, if memory serves, told me that farmers were not building the pipe infrastructure (or whatever) to bring the water to their farms. I may not have her explanation exactly right, but she did not talk about the endangered minnow, which seems to be the reason given by the farmers themselves as to why they are no longer supplied with water for their farms. One farmer I saw on Hannity attributed his problem with suddenly not getting water to environmentalists, and not to a lack of infrastructure. When it comes to laying out large sums of money for infrastructure, farmers are the epitome of hard work and long-term investment.

Most of the people I talked to had no idea that this was going on. Furthermore, in driving down 99, spending about 2.5 hours in central California, I only observed one field which was obviously dried up. So, this is not an obvious problem to people who drive around California (I do not know where these fields are which are denied water).

Maybe this story is not sexy enough, but if my understanding of it is accurate, then the news sources in California simply do not want the public to know that farms which have been in the hands of certain families for as long as a century are being turned into weeds because of a minnow. Or, if I want to give way to paranoia, perhaps some larger farming corporation simply is using this ploy to swallow up many of the farms in this area. Destroy the farm, drive down the property values, and take the land.

Most news services there are not willing to do any real investigative reporting, or any reporting which can put left-wing concerns in a bad light. The press send up dozens of reporters to Alaska to dig up any dirt that they could on Sarah Palin (which is a reasonable thing to do; I have no problem with that). However, very few reporters did any similar investigative reporting on Obama or Biden; and the press was almost silent on any real criticism of them during the election.

The second topic—one that few people knew much about—was the TEA parties, which were held all over the United States. If memory serves, there were at least 3 TEA parties in Sacramento on 3 different dates (and I do not know if they held several simultaneous TEA parties in Sacramento as they did in the Houston area).

One person in California knew something about the Sacramento TEA parties—my fake sister, Sue. She objected to them for two reasons: (1) they were not really analogous to the Boston Tea Party (“We have representation”); and (2) the people who attended these TEA parties were nutjobs. She had watched one interview with a TEA party attendee who talked about how we ought not to pay any taxes (or any federal taxes?) and how everyone ought to own guns and protect their property from other people and from the government. Whatever news service that she watched or listened to found the goofiest nutcase they could find, and interviewed him as being representative of the TEA party movement. That is just plain dishonest. And the news people know it. The reporters on the ground know it; the producer knows it; and the person who decides what goes on the air knows it.

This same fake sister said, “I think everyone ought to be taxed the same amount: 10%, 20% or whatever.” (not an exact quote). Here is what is sad about her understanding of the TEA party news: Sue has more in common with the TEA party attendees than the nutcase she watched being interviewed. If all the attendees of the Sacramento TEA party were asked, “Would you agree to a simple 10% or 20% tax, straight across the board, applied to everyone, instead of our present system” I daresay, 70–95% would have agreed that would be a far better system. If these same people were asked if they agreed with Mr. Nutjob, maybe 2 or 3% would have gone along with him.

My fake sister had this warped view of the TEA parties—people who would agree with her—and instead allowed the news to present a false picture of those who attend TEA parties, and she believed the false news. She is an intelligent person. She is not the kind of person who doesn’t think. However, she simply believed the news that she was fed.

My mother knew a little about the TEA parties, and had kept her eye open for any news on it, since I have pestered her about them for a few months now. However, she knew nothing about the July 4^th TEA parties.

I think that I reported here that, in Houston, on the front page of our local section of the news, was a large photo and a many-columned story about 500 people who gathered downtown to dance like Michael Jackson; but, not a single word on the many thousands of people who had gathered in several locations around Houston for the TEA parties.

If there are 1000 or 5000 people gathering downtown, I want to know what it is all about. I don’t want my news to hide this from me. I don’t want the news to give me a false picture of what is going on; I just want to know why they are there and what their deal is. How hard is it to send a few newsmen out to such a gathering to take a few pictures, record a little footage, and to simply ask the people there, “What’s up?”

It does not matter to me why the people are there. I don’t care if I like the cause or dislike the cause. I simply want an honest picture of who these people are and what is on their collective minds.

What has happened in the United States is, most of the newspapers and almost all of the televised news has a particular viewpoint, and the news which is in line with this viewpoint is reported on; and news which is not in line with the viewpoint is either distorted or ignored.

Even my most liberal friends should recognize that this is very problematic. It should not matter if you support and love President Obama or think that he is the worst president ever; you should still want accurate news.

This should be non-negotiable. If you subscribe to a paper or watch a particular news station regularly, and you realize that you are being spoon-fed a point-of-view rather than the news, then let them know of your frustration, and cancel your subscription or stop watching...but let them know why.

Right now, there are 33 czars, answerable to no one but Obama; I don’t think I got them all listed; I listed as many as I could find in a short search:

A Mideast Peace Czar, a Mideast Policy Czar, a Sudan Czar, Guantanamo Closure Czar; a Green Jobs Czar, a Pay Czar and an Energy Czar; an Urban Affairs Czar, Technology Czar, and even a Great Lakes Czar; there's also an Information Czar; a Climate Czar, a Health Care Czar, a TARP Czar, a Stimulus Accountability Czar, a Drug Czar, a WMD Czar.

1. Obama has circumvented our U.S. Congress by naming Czars; most of whom do not need confirmation. They will answer ONLY to Obama; no one else.

2. Will Obama claim he has "Saved" or "Created" jobs by appointing these Czars? The Czars will need "operating" staff (secretaries,receptionists,researchers, legal teams, etc.) at a cost to taxpayers of WHAT AMOUNT per year? ($1 MILLION)? Heck MICHELLE OBAMA's "operating budget" is $1,400,000/year for her staff and clerks (Didn't know that America?)

3. WHERE will they be "housed"? Will an arm of the House or the Senate have to give up one of their buildings near the Capitol? Will they be "housed" in the White House? [ After all The White House includes: six stories and 55,000 ft² (5,100 m²) of floor space, 132 rooms and 35 bathrooms, 412 doors, 147 windows, twenty-eight fireplaces, eight staircases, three elevators, five full-time chefs, a tennis court, a (single-lane) bowling alley, a movie theater, a jogging track, a swimming pool, and a putting green.

Does the HOUSE and the SENATE realize they are probably being "phased" out? Think about that. It could be a possibility. WHY YOU ASK?

Secretary of State (Hillary Clinton) SHOULD be involved/over; Afghanistan/Pakistan, Middle EastPolicy, Middle East Peace,Sudan,..right? Nope.now we have Czars for each specific area.

Shouldn't Janet Napolitano (Homeland Security) be involved/over; our Borders, National Intelligence, Terrorism, etc.? Nope..now we have Czars for each specific area.

Shouldn't Tim Geithner (Sec. of Treasury) be involved/over; Economic Recovery, Executive Pay for bailed out companies, Auto industry (since we now own a % of GM), Stimulus accountability, TARP money,etc.? Nope..now we have a Czars for each specific area.

And some Americans (voted for Obama) CAN'T understand the "tea bag swinging people"?

There has been an EXPLOSIVE Power grab in only 160+ days by Obama. Cabinet Secretaries are being turned into "Yes" men/women. Congressmen/women are being turned into lemmings. Americans will end up being "worker ants".

So what's a president to do when the promises he made about his economic stimulus program fail to materialize? If you're Barack Obama, you redefine your goals and act as if America won't remember what you said originally. That's a neat trick if you can get away with it, but Mr. Obama won't. His words are a matter of public record and he will be held to them.

When it came to the stimulus package, the president and his administration promised, in the words of National Economic Director Larry Summers, "You'll see the effects begin almost immediately." Now it's clear that those promised jobs and growth haven't materialized.

So Mr. Obama is attempting to lower expectations retroactively, saying in an op-ed in Sunday's Washington Post that his stimulus "was, from the start, a two-year program." That is misleading. Mr. Obama never said if his stimulus were passed things might still get significantly worse in the following year.

In February, Mr. Obama said this about the goals of his stimulus package: "I think my initial measure of success is creating or saving four million jobs." He later explained the stimulus's $787 billion would "go directly to . . . generating three to four million new jobs." And his Council of Economic Advisors issued an official analysis showing that the unemployment rate would top out in the third quarter of this year at just over 8%.

That quarter began on July 1, and unemployment is now 9.5%, up from 7.6% when Mr. Obama took office. There are 2.6 million fewer Americans working than there were on the day Mr. Obama was sworn in. The president says now that unemployment will exceed 10% this year, and his advisers say it will remain high through much of next year.

Earlier this year, Mr. Obama assured us that most of the stimulus money "will go out the door immediately." But it hasn't. Only about 7.7% of the stimulus has been spent in the six months since its passage, and more of it will be spent in the program's last eight years than in its first year. So now the president claims he said something different. "We also knew that it would take some time for the money to get out the door," Mr. Obama said in his weekly radio address on Saturday.

One problem with Mr. Obama's stimulus bill that is rarely talked about is that it will force a huge, and likely permanent, increase in discretionary, domestic spending. That portion of federal spending was $393 billion in President George W. Bush's last budget. Democrats immediately raised it to $408 billion for this fiscal year and now face the question of whether to make the stimulus a one-time expenditure or a permanent spending increase.

Federal education spending is a good example. As part of the stimulus, Mr. Obama nearly doubled education spending to $80 billion from $41 billion. If Congress adds that and other stimulus spending into the baseline for future budgets, discretionary domestic spending could mushroom to $550 billion or $600 billion next year. If that happens, Mr. Obama will have broken his pledge that the stimulus would be temporary spending.

As is Mr. Obama's habit, he has answered his critics by creating straw-man arguments. In last weekend's radio address, he attacked detractors as those who "felt that doing nothing was somehow an answer." But many of Mr. Obama's critics didn't feel that way. They offered -- and Mr. Obama almost completely ignored -- constructive ideas to jump-start the economy.

For example, House Republicans offered an alternative recovery package of immediate tax cuts and safety-net measures that cost half as much as Mr. Obama's stimulus program. Republicans have also calculated that their plans would have created 50% more jobs than the stimulus. They reached that estimate by using the same job-growth econometric model that the president's Council of Economic Advisors used for the stimulus.

While in Moscow recently, Mr. Obama answered questions on whether his administration had misread the economy by saying "there's nothing that we would have done differently." Let me suggest two things: He could have proposed pro-growth policies rather than ones that retard economic recovery with a massive increase in deficit spending. And he could fulfill his promise to speak to us honestly rather than selling his proposals with promises and goals he rapidly discards.

In his 1946 essay "Politics and the English Language," George Orwell wrote about words used in a "consciously dishonest way." "That is," Orwell wrote, "the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different." Americans are right to wonder if their president is using his own private definitions for the words he uses to sell his policies.

"No matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise to the American people," Obama said Monday, June 15, 2009 addressing the American Medical Association. "If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your health care plan, you'll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what." Obama continued the mantra, in case you did not get it: "If you like what you're getting, keep it," he said. "Nobody is forcing you to shift."

Congress: It didn't take long to run into an "uh-oh" moment when reading the House's "health care for all Americans" bill. Right there on Page 16 is a provision making individual private medical insurance illegal.

The provision would indeed outlaw individual private coverage. Under the Orwellian header of "Protecting The Choice To Keep Current Coverage," the "Limitation On New Enrollment" section of the bill clearly states:

"Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day" of the year the legislation becomes law.

So we can all keep our coverage, just as promised - with, of course, exceptions: Those who currently have private individual coverage won't be able to change it. Nor will those who leave a company to work for themselves be free to buy individual plans from private carriers.

From the beginning, opponents of the public option plan have warned that if the government gets into the business of offering subsidized health insurance coverage, the private insurance market will wither. Drawn by a public option that will be 30% to 40% cheaper than their current premiums because taxpayers will be funding it, employers will gladly scrap their private plans and go with Washington's coverage.

The nonpartisan Lewin Group estimated in April that 120 million or more Americans could lose their group coverage at work and end up in such a program. That would leave private carriers with 50 million or fewer customers. This could cause the market to, as Lewin Vice President John Sheils put it, "fizzle out altogether."

What wasn't known until now is that the bill itself will kill the market for private individual coverage by not letting any new policies be written after the public option becomes law.

The legislation is also likely to finish off health savings accounts, a goal that Democrats have had for years. They want to crush that alternative because nothing gives individuals more control over their medical care, and the government less, than HSAs.

With HSAs out of the way, a key obstacle to the left's expansion of the welfare state will be removed.

The public option won't be an option for many, but rather a mandate for buying government care. A free people should be outraged at this advance of soft tyranny.

With the love-fest going on for Cronkite I felt the need to interject some reality into the situation. A few reasons why the man shouldn't be remembered as fondly as some suggest.

One reason..His part in ensuring that Vietnam would end badly for the United States by uttering these kind of words, and doing it on a nightly basis:

Who won and who lost in the great Tet offensive against the cities? I'm not sure. The Vietcong did not win by a knockout, but neither did we. The referees of history may make it a draw.

It seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate.

But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.

He uttered those opinions of his after visiting Vietnam and the Tet Offensive. Words that were completely untrue.

Another reason..He was one of the first reporters to give his opinion while reading the news, and in so doing started a gradual erosion of our MSM to what it is today. A complete embarrassment on so many levels.

Lee Cary, a Vietnam Vet:

Today, it's hard to fully appreciate the stature and status Cronkite held in 1968. He was the successor in fame to the demigod persona that had been Edward R. Murrow. When President Johnson heard of Cronkite's comments, he was quoted as saying, "That's it. If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost middle America."

In January 2006, Cronkite said his statement on Vietnam was his proudest moment. When asked then if he would give the same advice on Iraq, Cronkite didn't hesitate to say "Yes."

At the time, Cronkite's pronouncement added credibility and importance to all the network anchors. His was a stunning exercise of media power. But, in the perspective of history, the outcome of his pronouncement is not universally recognized as having been positive. He overtly and figuratively stepped out from behind the microphone to add his personal commentary to the news. We had not seen this before. By doing so, Cronkite issued an implicit license to his journalistic colleagues to interject personal opinions into their factual reporting of the news. The difference is that Cronkite clearly labeled it as personal opinion, while many MSM news personalities today weave their opinions into reporting. His sentiment registered with many, perhaps most, of his viewers that night. He changed opinions by offering his own. But in hindsight, his analysis was wrong - dead wrong for some.

Generally, the "referees of history" have not rendered the TET offensive a military draw. The VC/NVA suffered unexpectedly high casualties, from which it took years to recover. In particular, the ranks of the Viet Cong were decimated. General No Nguyen Giap, the Supreme Commander of the Viet Minh (NVA) forces said, in a 1989 interview with CBS's Morley Safer,

"We paid a high price, but so did you.not only in lives and material. After Tet the Americans had to back down and come to the negotiating table, because the war was not only moving into.dozens of cities and towns in South Vietnam, but also to the living rooms of Americans back home for some time. The most important result of the Tet offensive was it made you de-escalate the bombing, and it brought you to the negotiation table. It was, therefore, a victory. The war was fought on many fronts. At that time the most important one was American public opinion." (The Vietnam War: An Encyclopedia of Quotations, Howard Langer, 2005)

The Vietnam War did not end in a stalemate, particularly for those S. Vietnamese who, at risk and often loss of life, loyally supported the U.S. Armed Forces (not all did, but very many did). We left them in a lurch, cut off their military aid, and watched while they suffered the consequences when the North Vietnamese blatantly ignored the negotiated resolution (they never intended to honor) that Cronkite advocated.

Many of those of us who served in Vietnam do not look upon its ending as reflecting "honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy." A compelling case can be made that we should never have sent troops to Vietnam in the first place. But we did. And then, after nearly 60,000 U.S. deaths and countless Vietnamese casualties, we bugged out. There's no way to put an honorable face on that unavoidable truth.

Once upon a time, I lived for awhile not far from a village called Ba Chuc in An Giang Province in the Mekong Delta. After the U.S. evacuated Vietnam, there was nothing to stop old animosities between the Cambodians and Vietnamese from turning hot. Here's a description of what happened in Ba Chuc.

"On April 30, 1977, Pol Pot's troops launched a surprise attack on 13 villages in eight Vietnamese border provinces. Ba Chuc was the hardest hit. The massacre was at its fiercest during the 12 days of occupation, April 18-30, 1978, during which the intruders killed 3,157 villagers. The survivors fled and took refuge in the pagodas of Tam Buu and Phi Lai or in caves on Mount Tuong, but they were soon discovered. The raiders shot them, slit their throats or beat them to death with sticks. Babies were flung into the air and pierced with bayonets. Women were raped and left to die with stakes planted in their genitals."

There were two survivors to the massacre.

Cronkite didn't cover it on the CBS evening news.

As judged by subsequent events, Cronkite was wrong. And over time, his words became a watershed marking the place where the gradual erosion of the MSM's credibility began.

I appreciate his support of our space program, being a huge supporter myself (when we were actually accomplishing something other then just circling the earth), but that’s about it to me. He helped bring about the cowardly retreat from Vietnam by our elected leaders. He helped to bring about the MSM erosion. In short, he's nothing short of a overblown, over-hyped, celebrity who could read the news.

And for all of those reasons I thought little about the fact that he died at 92. Many of our best and brightest died at 20 in Vietnam and in no small part because of Cronkite, they ended up making the ultimate sacrifice for nothing.

The average length of unemployment is higher than it's been since government began tracking the data in 1948.

The recent unemployment numbers have undermined confidence that we might be nearing the bottom of the recession. What we can see on the surface is disconcerting enough, but the inside numbers are just as bad.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics preliminary estimate for job losses for June is 467,000, which means 7.2 million people have lost their jobs since the start of the recession. The cumulative job losses over the last six months have been greater than for any other half year period since World War II, including the military demobilization after the war. The job losses are also now equal to the net job gains over the previous nine years, making this the only recession since the Great Depression to wipe out all job growth from the previous expansion.

Here are 10 reasons we are in even more trouble than the 9.5% unemployment rate indicates:

- June's total assumed 185,000 people at work who probably were not. The government could not identify them; it made an assumption about trends. But many of the mythical jobs are in industries that have absolutely no job creation, e.g., finance. When the official numbers are adjusted over the next several months, June will look worse.

- More companies are asking employees to take unpaid leave. These people don't count on the unemployment roll.

- No fewer than 1.4 million people wanted or were available for work in the last 12 months but were not counted. Why? Because they hadn't searched for work in the four weeks preceding the survey.

- The number of workers taking part-time jobs due to the slack economy, a kind of stealth underemployment, has doubled in this recession to about nine million, or 5.8% of the work force. Add those whose hours have been cut to those who cannot find a full-time job and the total unemployed rises to 16.5%, putting the number of involuntarily idle in the range of 25 million.

- The average work week for rank-and-file employees in the private sector, roughly 80% of the work force, slipped to 33 hours. That's 48 minutes a week less than before the recession began, the lowest level since the government began tracking such data 45 years ago. Full-time workers are being downgraded to part time as businesses slash labor costs to remain above water, and factories are operating at only 65% of capacity. If Americans were still clocking those extra 48 minutes a week now, the same aggregate amount of work would get done with 3.3 million fewer employees, which means that if it were not for the shorter work week the jobless rate would be 11.7%, not 9.5% (which far exceeds the 8% rate projected by the Obama administration).

- The average length of official unemployment increased to 24.5 weeks, the longest since government began tracking this data in 1948. The number of long-term unemployed (i.e., for 27 weeks or more) has now jumped to 4.4 million, an all-time high.

- The average worker saw no wage gains in June, with average compensation running flat at $18.53 an hour.

- The goods producing sector is losing the most jobs -- 223,000 in the last report alone.

- The prospects for job creation are equally distressing. The likelihood is that when economic activity picks up, employers will first choose to increase hours for existing workers and bring part-time workers back to full time. Many unemployed workers looking for jobs once the recovery begins will discover that jobs as good as the ones they lost are almost impossible to find because many layoffs have been permanent. Instead of shrinking operations, companies have shut down whole business units or made sweeping structural changes in the way they conduct business. General Motors and Chrysler, closed hundreds of dealerships and reduced brands. Citigroup and Bank of America cut tens of thousands of positions and exited many parts of the world of finance.

Job losses may last well into 2010 to hit an unemployment peak close to 11%. That unemployment rate may be sustained for an extended period.

Can we find comfort in the fact that employment has long been considered a lagging indicator? It is conventionally seen as having limited predictive power since employment reflects decisions taken earlier in the business cycle. But today is different. Unemployment has doubled to 9.5% from 4.8% in only 16 months, a rate so fast it may influence future economic behavior and outlook.

How could this happen when Washington has thrown trillions of dollars into the pot, including the famous $787 billion in stimulus spending that was supposed to yield $1.50 in growth for every dollar spent? For a start, too much of the money went to transfer payments such as Medicaid, jobless benefits and the like that do nothing for jobs and growth. The spending that creates new jobs is new spending, particularly on infrastructure. It amounts to less than 10% of the stimulus package today.

About 40% of U.S. workers believe the recession will continue for another full year, and their pessimism is justified. As paychecks shrink and disappear, consumers are more hesitant to spend and won't lead the economy out of the doldrums quickly enough.

It may have made him unpopular in parts of the Obama administration, but Vice President Joe Biden was right when he said a week ago that the administration misread how bad the economy was and how effective the stimulus would be. It was supposed to be about jobs but it wasn't. The Recovery Act was a single piece of legislation but it included thousands of funding schemes for tens of thousands of projects, and those programs are stuck in the bureaucracy as the government releases the funds with typical inefficiency.

Another $150 billion, which was allocated to state coffers to continue programs like Medicaid, did not add new jobs; hundreds of billions were set aside for tax cuts and for new benefits for the poor and the unemployed, and they did not add new jobs. Now state budgets are drowning in red ink as jobless claims and Medicaid bills climb.

Next year state budgets will have depleted their initial rescue dollars. Absent another rescue plan, they will have no choice but to slash spending, raise taxes, or both. State and local governments, representing about 15% of the economy, are beginning the worst contraction in postwar history amid a deficit of $166 billion for fiscal 2010, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and a gap of $350 billion in fiscal 2011.

Households overburdened with historic levels of debt will also be saving more. The savings rate has already jumped to almost 7% of after-tax income from 0% in 2007, and it is still going up. Every dollar of saving comes out of consumption. Since consumer spending is the economy's main driver, we are going to have a weak consumer sector and many businesses simply won't have the means or the need to hire employees. After the 1990-91 recessions, consumers went out and bought houses, cars and other expensive goods. This time, the combination of a weak job picture and a severe credit crunch means that people won't be able to get the financing for big expenditures, and those who can borrow will be reluctant to do so. The paycheck has returned as the primary source of spending.

This process is nowhere near complete and, until it is, the economy will barely grow if it does at all, and it may well oscillate between sluggish growth and modest decline for the next several years until the rebalancing of excessive debt has been completed. Until then, the economy will be deprived of adequate profits and cash flow, and businesses will not start to hire nor race to make capital expenditures when they have vast idle capacity.

No wonder poll after poll shows a steady erosion of confidence in the stimulus. So what kind of second-act stimulus should we look for? Something that might have a real multiplier effect, not a congressional wish list of pet programs. It is critical that the Obama administration not play politics with the issue. The time to get ready for a serious infrastructure program is now. It's a shame Washington didn't get it right the first time.

The latest polling data look great for President Obama: The numbers show that Americans love national health care. But if history and polling trends are any guide, however, that will change.

Voters right now are in what pollster Daniel Yankelovich called the Wishful Thinking stage -- a moment in the life of an opinion analogous to the dreamy early days of a relationship. Yankelovich believed that opinion evolved through seven stages: Dawning Awareness, Greater Urgency, Reaching for Solutions, Wishful Thinking, Weighing the Choices, Taking a Stand and Making a Responsible Judgment. In the next few weeks, when voters discover what national health care will cost and how it could affect their own care, romance will give way to reality.

Americans favor by more than 3 to 1 "the government offering everyone a government-administered health insurance plan that would compete with private health insurance plans" and other large-scale federal initiatives. At least that's what they thought as of mid-June in a New York Times-CBS News poll. But the respondents in that poll were opining about an idea, not hard facts.

Only after most of the polling was complete did the Congressional Budget Office release its bombshell evaluation of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's reform bill, which would just begin to do what the poll respondents so enthusiastically favored. The report's sobering bottom line: The bill would increase the federal deficit by $1 trillion over the next decade yet make only a dent in the number of uninsured, who would decline from 19 percent of the non-elderly population to 13 percent.

That combination -- huge cost, minor benefit -- is probably not what most people thought they'd be getting. Another bill, from the Senate Finance Committee, would cost still more. Legislators are scrambling for fixes, but even if they find them, they'll face a separate problem. Health-care reform is going to cost major dollars no matter what, and those dollars will have to be extracted mainly from those most able to pay: the top-earning 40 percent of the population. When these top earners figure out that they're being asked during a recession to shell out more -- through increased taxes, higher insurance premiums or other mechanisms -- for benefits that will go mostly to others, they won't be happy. And that top 40 percent knows how to make itself heard in Washington.

This isn't just speculation. Similar scenarios played out in 1993 when the Clintons pushed for their ill-fated health care plan and in 1988 after Congress passed an insurance plan to protect the elderly against the costs of catastrophic illness. In 1988, polls had shown that Americans overwhelmingly favored such a plan in the abstract, and large bipartisan majorities passed it in both houses. Only the top 40 percent of seniors would have paid a tax surcharge to fund the plan, but those were the people who tended to carry supplemental insurance already. Once they realized what was happening, they howled in a way that legislators couldn't ignore. Seventeen months after President Ronald Reagan signed the bill into law, Congress repealed it. None of its provisions ever took effect.

Today, with more ambitious reforms on the table, a scenario not unlike 1988's could be taking shape. Dig deep into the latest polling, and you'll find that while most Americans think the state of health care is a serious problem, 77 percent say they are satisfied with the quality of care they receive. When those in that large majority find they're being asked to pay more for something they're basically happy with, they will enter Yankelovich's fifth stage, Weighing the Choices.

Yankelovich wrote rather presciently in the pages of Fortune back in 1992 that stage five is the hardest because it is the moment on the journey to a rational judgment when people must come to grips with the painful tradeoffs inherent in all complex issues. So when will that happen? I predict that stage five will begin in August, assuming the House passes a bill before Congress takes its August recess. Only then will we discover what citizens truly believe about health care. The result could be far more modest reform than we've been led to expect.

Of all the statistics pouring into the White House every day, top economic adviser Larry Summers highlighted one Friday to make his case that the economic free-fall has ended. The number of people searching for the term "economic depression" on Google is down to normal levels, Summers said.

“A bailout is just rich bankers bailing out other rich bankers using the taxpayer’s credit card.“ These are the thoughts of a writer for Rolling Stone Magazine (although he does not specifically rag on Obama, who would have thought Rolling Stone Magazine might turn against Obama’s fiscal policies?):

[One of the few places where I disagree with Rush is, I think that Obama is screwing up the economy simply out of having no idea what to do, as he is an ideologue who has never run anything before in his life; Rush suggests that it is perhaps more devious than that].

RUSH: Why would TIME Magazine run this story? It's on the website. You know, TIME Magazine is... What do they have, 40 covers of Obama in like 20 weeks? And it says here "Obama's Stimulus Plan Failing by its Own Measure," and here's how it's written in a story by a guy named Stephen Gandel. The lede to the story is: "The $787 billion stimulus plan is turning out to be far less stimulating than its architects expected." See, this is where everybody's missing it. This stimulus plan is doing everything its "architects" intended it to do and that's prop up the states first and prop up Democrats first, prop up unions first and second, and not ever stimulate the economy. Now, I have to think, for TIME Magazine to run this story, there has to be some sense that they better cover their rear end on this journalistically. TIME Magazine, they have been in the tank. It seems like every week or every other week Obama is on the cover of TIME Magazine or Newsweek -- and if it's not Obama, it's Michelle (My Belle) on the cover.

From CNN Money: "National Health Care May Never Happen -- The latest polling looks great for President Obama: It shows that Americans love national health care." Yeah, but what's the rub? "If history and polling trends are any guide, however, that will change. Voters right now are in what the famous pollster Daniel Yankelovich called the Wishful Thinking stage -- a moment in the life of an opinion analogous to the dreamy early days of a relationship." This piece goes on to say that Americans love the idea of health insurance for all until they realize how much it's going to cost them, and this is not speculation here. "Similar scenarios played out in 1993 when the Clintons pushed for their ill-fated health care plan and in 1988 after Congress passed an insurance plan to protect the elderly against the costs of catastrophic illness.

"In 1988, polls had shown that Americans overwhelmingly favored such a plan in the abstract, and large bipartisan majorities passed it in both houses. Only the top 40 percent of seniors would have paid a tax surcharge to fund the plan, but those were the people who tended to carry supplemental insurance already. Once they realized what was happening, they howled in a way that legislators couldn't ignore." Remember, this is when Dan "Rosty" Rostenkowski got beaten up by constituents in Chicago, outside his car. "Congress repealed it. None of its provisions ever took effect. Today, with more ambitious reforms on the table, a scenario not unlike 1988's could be taking shape. Dig deep into the latest polling, and you'll find that while most Americans think the state of health care is a serious problem, 77 percent say they are satisfied with the quality of care they receive."

Now, why is Obama, then, pushing it? Well, Obama is pushing health care -- and he wants this done by August. He's got to get this done by August! He wants to get this done by the recess because the economy is tanking. I'm going to tell you why he wants it fast. The economy is tanking. Obama knows better than anyone else that it's tanking, and he also knows that by the end of the year he cannot pass health care because the state of the economy is going to be so bad that everybody will know it. So the tactic here is speed and deception, the same tactic being used with Sotomayor and her confirmation hearings. The public is not going to be in any mood for a massive new spending program of any kind when the depth of the current spending and its disastrous consequences are known, and they will be known -- and they are going to get worse. The circumstances are going to get worse.

Mort Zuckerman today has a piece in the Wall Street Journal: "The Economy Is Even Worse Than You Think." Mort Zuckerman is the chairman and

editor of US News & World Report. He owns the New York Daily News. "The average length of unemployment is higher than it's been since government began tracking the data in 1948," is the subheadline of his piece. Now we got Timmy Geithner out there saying... Is it Geithner? Who was it? Somebody said we're going to have a jobless recovery. Was it Geithner? Was it Larry Summers? Somebody said it. I got it here somewhere. How do you have a jobless recovery? Oh, I get it! Wall Street comes back. Goldman Sachs is doing fine. They have a $3.4 billion profit. Goldman Sachs is doing fine. Wait 'til Americans find out about that.

I mentioned a piece yesterday by Robert Samuelson in Newsweek magazine on the rich not being recession-proof this time, and I read that again. The most important part of the article in the Samuelson piece yesterday, is a discussion on a Wall Street Journal article and the reaction thereto. Now, here's from the Samuelson piece. Quote: "In April, The Wall Street Journal ran an article sympathetically portraying families with incomes around $250,000, the level that President Obama has targeted for tax increases." Sympathetic to those people. "By most measures, these families rank in the top 2 percent to 4 percent of the income spectrum. But many -- possibly most -- see themselves as 'upper middle class' and not 'rich,' the paper reported.

"'I'm not after sympathy,' said the wife of a surgeon who makes about $260,000. 'What I want is a reality check on what rich means. I can pay my mortgage and can buy some clothes. I'm not going without, but I'm not living a life of luxury.' The mayor of San Jose scoffed at $250,000. That's what a two-engineer couple might make, he said. It put them in 'the upper working class' and wasn't enough to 'buy a home in Silicon Valley.'" So how can you say you're rich if you can't buy a home in Silicon Valley? "The article triggered an outpouring of e-mails -- many applauding that someone had finally described their harried plight; others sarcastically wondering what planet the whiners lived on." How could you make $250,000 a year and be complaining about it? "But so much angst among the affluent -- however defined -- attests to something else," Samuelson, this is his point: "the present recession, unlike any other since World War II, has deeply shaken the nation's economic elite."

And that was the theme of his story, but I didn't mention to you his quoting of the Wall Street Journal piece in April that closes the loop. Now, this illustrates very well why it is so dangerous to allow the government to pick and choose tax winners and tax losers. If you make $10,000 you're okay taxing the rich guy making 25,000. If you make 25K, tax the rich guy making 50 because he doesn't need it all -- and on and on and on and on and on. If you make 75, tax the guy making a hundred. You make 250, you're getting soaked and everybody wants you to get soaked! That's another problem here: 43% of taxpayers now do not pay income tax. They pay FICA, payroll and all that, but they don't pay income tax. Now, how can you have a representative republic when almost half of the people do not pay taxes?

And when those people don't pay taxes, they understand who's supporting them. So they favor tax increases on everybody else. The natural human tendency (meaning your average Democrat) is to think that anyone and everyone who makes more than you is just a selfish bastard if he complains about taxes. Obama, politicians like Obama know this. They deliberately twist and use that class-envy reaction under the big lie of fairness, to gain even more control of the economy and then use that control for their ends and best interests, not the nation's. So this is why flat tax, Fair Tax, works. This arbitrary setting of rates based on what Obama thinks is rich, leads to even further diversions and divisions in the country among the population. Plus it doesn't raise any money! You know, the fascinating thing?

If you were listening yesterday and you heard me say you didn't want to listen and you didn't want to believe me that Obama is purposely destroying the middle class -- purposely destroying it, purposely raiding it, taking capital away from the private sector and transferring it to governments and unions and so forth. If you don't want to believe that, if you just can't bring yourself to believe that anybody we would elect president would want to destroy, because you can't believe that somebody like Obama grew up hating America or being told it was unjust and immoral now has a chance to fix it -- you just don't believe it. Ask yourself this. We're running huge, as Jim Sasser in Tennessee says, "defycits." We got deficits coming out of every bodily orifice. We got deficits coming out of the mouth of every river in this country. We got deficits everywhere!

We got a $2.5 trillion budget deficit this year, a $12 trillion forecast, and there's more spending to come. Now, wouldn't you think that given that reality, one of the first things on the minds of people in Washington would be revenue generation? And isn't that what you think taxes are for? "Yes, that's right Mr. Limbaugh! We are taxed." This is the voice of the New Castrati." That's right, Mr. Limbaugh! We are taxed so that we citizens can do our civic duty and pay for all of the goods and services that our government generously provides for us." Okay, you believe that. You believe it's the purpose of taxes, raise money for the government to provide our roads and bridges and our schools and toasters and whatever the hell else. Have you seen the decline in revenue being generated by virtue of taxes given the recession?

There are more and more people out of work. More and more businesses are closing. One of the reasons the deficits are so high is that there is far less tax revenue being produced. It's just a simple matter of math. So here we have the smartest people in the world, the Obamas and the Larry Summerses and these guys, and their policies are creating less revenue. "Less revenue to run the country to provide the goods and services that we the citizens need and crave," and yet they're not bothered by it. They continue with policies that will result in less revenue still being generated via taxes, and what are they going to then do? Raise taxes on the remaining people who pay them. By the way, if you make under 250 grand and they do this health care, you're going to get soaked like everybody else. If you're one of the 43% not paying income tax, get ready.

You're going to get soaked with a value tax, a VAT tax, some kind of sales tax. It's going to happen. We're all going to pay higher taxes, under the theory that that will raise more revenue. It's going to reduce revenue because it's going to slow down the economy even further, and it's going to cause more people to lose their jobs. We're going to have fewer taxpayers, and when you have fewer taxpayers, you have less tax revenue. Yet none of this bothers them. They are prepared to fully implement every stage of this, to create less revenue, more unemployment. It can't be that they're just naive and mistaken, even after a year of this. Now, there's talk of a second stimulus now! After the abject failure of the first, and the first stimulus, we've only spent 6% of it -- and it's all gone to the states to help with their own budget deficits and to the unions.

We haven't even spent it. They know it's not going to stimulate anything, economically. Now they're talking about a second one. There is no other conclusion than there is an ongoing effort to remake the structure of this country from a free market capitalist system to a command-and-control, government-run system for the express purpose of making sure that everybody is equal -- or as equal as they can make it -- that nobody has any more than everybody else. And if they do, they'll tax that. That's who these people are. They have grown up, they have been taught, they've been raised that America is unjust and immoral. Obama goes over there and says we gotta get rid of all missiles, while he's dropping bombs and firing missiles in Afghanistan.

This CIA program... The New York Times knew about this program, by the way, in 2002, we found out. They knew about this program. They talked about it on Sunday. They knew about it back in 2002. It was a program designed to kill -- at close range, not with missiles or bombs but at close range -- Al-Qaeda leaders in 2001, which makes total sense. Right after 9/11, you wanna go get those guys. Everybody said, "Go get 'em! They're at Tora Bora? Go get 'em!" The Democrats all said, "Well, you didn't get Osama, so you failed," and Leon Panetta has canceled the program. He cancelled the program, while Obama is implementing it in Afghanistan we're dropping missiles. We're going in trying to get these guys in close range. Oh! Another story in the Stack of Stuff. You know what? He may not be able to close Gitmo in January.

He just might not be able to do it -- and it's Bush's fault. (interruption) What? Bush didn't tell him how fully intertwined Club Gitmo was with the War on Terror and how there was nowhere else to put these prisons 'cause nobody else wanted them and so forth. It's just like Biden said. What did he say? "We underestimated or misread how bad the economy was because Bush didn't tell us. We didn't have the right figures." It's the same thing with Gitmo. (interruption) That's like my whole point. They did know how bad it was. We all knew how bad it was. Everybody knew how bad it was. They knew how bad the economy was. This was all smoke and mirrors because they still want people to believe that Obama's oriented towards fixing it. What they don't know is he is fixing it his way. It's working exactly as he wants it to. His whole point is to go out there and convince people that it's coming. The recovery and the rebound and your job, it's coming. "It may be even worse if we hadn't done the first stimulus."

RUSH: A very strategic announcement by President Obama this morning. During the confirmation hearings of Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama at the White House, after a meeting with the Dutch prime minister had some words, and nobody broke away from the hearings to cover this. Well, not on the two channels I was watching. I didn't see them break away from Sotomayor. They played video later after it happened during a break in the hearings for Sotomayor. But here's President Obama. Now, if you're going to make this announcement, what better time to do it than when the world is focused on a Supreme Court confirmation hearing?

OBAMA: My expectation is, is that we will probably continue to see unemployment tick up for several months, and the challenge for this administration is to make sure that even as we are stabilizing the financial system, we understand that the most important thing in the economy is are people able to find good jobs that pay good wages.

RUSH: Now, how is that hope and change working out for you? This, folks, is outrageous. He tells us unemployment is going to tick up. He could announce a couple things today that would not turn the job situation around immediately, but would change attitudes immediately. Eliminate corporate taxes or reduce them to 25% to whatever, capital gains, personal tax cuts, any number of things, and I tell you, Wall Street would go nuts and so would the private sector. But he says we gotta stabilize the financial system first. He says it here. "The challenge for this administration is to make sure that even as we're stabilizing the financial system --" like coming up with more money to give people to pay their mortgage when they're out of work, that's going to stabilize the financial system "-- we understand that the most important thing is are people able to find good jobs that pay good wages."

Now, we have to be very careful here, 'cause he doesn't mean a word of that. If he wanted circumstances or people to be able to find work at good wages, he wouldn't be doing the policies he's doing. Oops. Thought I was finished. I still have seven seconds to go. So I'll say it again. If he really wants to create jobs, he wouldn't be saying and doing what he's doing. No mistakes.

RUSH: The Politico today: "Obama's Rosy Scenario Turns Thorny." This is by Jeanne Cummings. "President Barack Obama's economic forecasts for long-term growth are too optimistic, many economists warn, a miscalculation that would mean budget deficits will be much higher than the administration is now acknowledging. ... Alternately, if Obama clings to current optimistic forecasts for long-term growth, he risks accusations that he is basing his fiscal plans on fictitious assumptions -- precisely the sort of charge he once leveled against the Bush administration." And on page two of this story is a former Clinton administration economic advisor, actually, Robert Shapiro: "It's also dangerous and risky because if the forecast doesn't come true, you've undermined the basis for the rest of your policies."

That's exactly why they're doing health care by August. That's exactly why they're trying to do everything before it bombs out, and it's going to bomb, they know it's going to bomb, they want it to bomb, they want to get this done before it bombs. If you have ever trusted me on anything, trust me on this. This is intentional, the speed at which they are proceeding to get all this done is to get it done before it gets so bad everybody has to acknowledge how bad it is and how wrong the plans to fix this have been. Obama's first forecast after the stimulus bombed is what the Politico says. Economists say his long-term predictions are no better. Forget growth, they're saying forget growth. He's so wrong on deficits we're not going to have any growth, by design. If you have never trusted me before, trust me now, all of this is by design.

It has been pointed out to me, by the way, and this is a good point, that the Democrats, Biden and these guys, are saying the same thing about the economy they said about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. All of these Democrats, remember how eager they were to go in there and take out Saddam, Hillary and all that bunch. They believed, 1998, we have the audio of all of them saying Saddam's got these nuclear weapons, mass destruction weapons, we gotta go in there and get 'em out, bad, bad, bad, when Bush said so, they did, same thing. But then, when no weapons of mass destruction of significance were found, what happened? Well, Joe Wilson surfaced and that started this whole parade of Bush lied, Bush lied to us. And that's essentially what Biden is saying, the same script, when Biden says, we misread, we guessed wrong, we didn't know how bad it was, they're saying they've been lied to again. These poor old Democrats lied to again. No, Obama didn't lie to them; Bush did. Bush lied to them about Gitmo. Bush lied to them about weapons of mass destruction. Bush lied to them about how bad the economy was.

So now the phrase is: Obama Lied and the Economy Died. Obama Lied and the Economy Died. Never mind that anybody can see the economic numbers just as we can see them -- and these people can see more economic numbers than we do, they are members of Congress, after all. But we didn't know, Bush lied, we didn't know how bad it was. Same tactic. All right, now, Snerdley is asking me how long is it going to -- look, that's the question, how long does any of Obama play? We don't know. How long does it play with his voters? Now, the CBS poll interestingly that has Obama falling to 57%, let me find this. If you dig into this, 57% that's his approval number, and that's down from 62, the CBS/New York Times. Fifty-seven percent say that the country's on the wrong track. He has lost six points in his approval numbers almost entirely from Democrats and independents, and the poll says it's the economy that's hurting him. So maybe the questions in the process of being answered, but as you heard, Harry Smith and Schieffer doing their best to cover it up, maybe even blame the poll a little bit.

Now, there's one thing about this poll I have to tell you that could mitigate it all. Republican support for Obama has actually risen by a point. It is Democrats and independents that account for his drop. So the Colin Powell Republican crowd loves the guy. They probably called McCain, I'm sure he said he approves. And I'm sure they called Colin Powell, I'm sure he said he approves of the way Obama's doing things. But he's down six points from Democrats and independents.

Okay. Back to the phones we go to Cheshire, Connecticut. John, thank you for holding, and welcome to the EIB Network.

CALLER: Hey, Rush, you know, diving into this how-long-does-it-play issue and something you brought up early in the show, with this $12 billion that he wants to spend now of money that we don't have on community colleges, and, you know, part of my thought process is, number one we're not giving a basic education to our kids at the high school level, so what's happening is these community colleges are taking the place, really, of what kids used to get in high school.

RUSH: You know, you are exactly right. I don't want to offend anybody here, but of course I'm me and that's generally not possible for me to avoid, is offending people, but I happen to, over the last five or six years, have run into some people that were taking courses at a community college, and I had them in junior high --

RUSH: -- and high school. I said, "Whoa," but I've always wondered about this, why we need job retraining centers. What the hell is school for in the first place?

CALLER: Right. I mean, there used to be a vo-tech program that was out there that kids could take that wanted to do that sort of thing, but along the lines of, you know, you ask how long does it play, I see this as kind of another $12 billion of money that's coming to keep people in the system for another two years. You know, we talked about the nursery school indoctrination, where they want to start the kids earlier. This is a way of keeping people in school for an extra two years and the brainwashing process can continue because if they're not out there actively seeking a job and maybe, you know, falling on their butt --

CALLER: -- and they're sitting in a classroom for two years getting God knows what out of it in terms of the indoctrination --

RUSH: And if they're losing their jobs and their health care is not portable, and they're scared to death about losing their health care, they'll support health care, it's like Marie Antoinette. Now, she didn't actually say this, Marie Antoinette has been crucified theoretically, philosophically by history. You know the whole thing, "Marie Antoinette, they don't have any bread." "Fine, let 'em eat cake." When I first heard that I was a kid and I said, "What's wrong with eating cake? I'd much rather eat cake than bread. Give me a good old-fashioned white cake, yellow cake any time over bunny bread or some of this store bought processed." "No, no, no. Cake back in those days was the scrapings from the oven." I said, "Oh, okay." But let's go along with history and Marie Antoinette, "They don't have bread, let 'em eat cake," Michelle Obama, Barack Obama, "They don't have jobs, let 'em hear about universal health care." That's the plan. You're right on the money out there, John. I appreciate it.

RUSH: Why didn't you ask me this five minutes ago when you came in the room? I'm starting the program. Yes, I have been -- stop the tape. Stop the theme music. Yes, I've been watching the Sotomayor stuff. What do you think I've been doing? Start the tape. From the beginning. I'll tell you what, though, I had to turn it off. The woman is scary. No, no, no, not the way she looks, the stuff she's saying. She's making it up. The stuff that she said in her speech, oh, it doesn't matter. She's exactly who we know she is. She's a reflection of the Bamster and they're trying to get past that today, and Jeff Sessions was great. I'll tell you another reason. Pat Leahy, the chairman of the committee, this guy needs a drain in his throat. I keep wanting to clear my throat every time I listen to this guy. He's starting to sound like Larry Flynt, have you noticed that? (doing Flynt impression) I'm just reading the closed-captioning.

Yes, I'm going to get to Sotomayor. Frankly, we can sum this up in five or six seconds. Everything she's saying today is not true. She is denying what she said previously in the features. She's saying that she was just trying to inspire Latinos when she said that wise a Latina has a richer decision, better decision-making process than a white male. She got into a little bit of a disagreement here over the quote from Sandra Day O'Connor. She's basically making it up. She's pretending she never said what she said before. It's obvious she's been coached about how to deal with this. She is who she is. Orrin Hatch just raked her over the coals. She says, "Well, the Ricci case was decided on precedent." There was no precedent! That was a summary judgment case. They didn't even publish the opinion. There was no precedent in the Ricci case that she could cite, yet that's her excuse.

Jeff Sessions was just tremendous. His interrogation, cross-examination from top to bottom was just great. It exposed all of the hypocrisy and the reality of Sonia Sotomayor. Now, this is all good, folks. These things need to happen because exposing her will help the people of this country understand who Obama is. And I don't think it's a foregone conclusion until the vote happens that she gets on the court. Looks like it, but you never know. There's a long time to go and there's plenty of opportunity for snafus. I guarantee you, I just guarantee you this: If there were video -- good video, indisputable video -- of Sonia Sotomayor making that statement about wise Latinas being better judges than white men, she wouldn't be sitting there today. If there were video of it. In that speech, that's practically the least offensive thing that she said. Sessions really, really grilled her on this notion that she made a speech again that judges make policy.

Well, she tried to tiptoe around that and did a 180 on it. She's not the person that you see today that she has been all of her life, when she's making speeches. So odds are that she gets confirmed but the process here is good, because it's helping to inform people who are watching this just who she is, because she's Obama. She's a reflection of Obama.

RUSH: Okay, while all this Sotomayor stuff is going on, one of the things that's happening here in much of the pop culture analysis is that all of this minutia and detail is being focused on and the big themes here are what's being lost. Ricci is a great example, the firefighter case in New Haven. Everybody is talking about, "Well, she did this, she did that," and relates to the wise Latina comment and so forth and she's trying to explain it away on the basis of precedent. The fact is she buried the case. Remember, now, this was a case with three judges, she was one of three, they decided it on summary judgment. It's no trial. And then buried the case. There was no published opinion. She was doing everything she could to make sure that her reasoning on this and her participation in this case would never, ever be made public.

If it hadn't been for Jose Cabranes, it would have worked. Jose Cabranes was not a member of the three-judge panel, I don't believe. He was a member of the full panel in the Second Circuit, and he looked at it, and he was shocked, and he had to write himself and say that he was shocked at how she had just totally ignored the Constitution and her ruling. And all of this back-and-forth today about Ricci is an attempt for her to retrace her steps, recast what she did, lie about the fact that there was precedent involved when there wasn't. She is oriented around racial and ethnic matters. She does believe that minorities have been given the short shrift simply because they're minorities and it's one of her jobs to change that circumstance so that minorities, whether they're right or wrong under the law, get the break, it's who she is. And that's the kind of thing that needs to be brought out.

Now, what I find fascinating about this, and this is one of the things that I have mixed emotions. On one hand it heartens me. On the other it discourages. Every one of these liberals that come up there as appointees to one court or another and even in a lot of cases some liberals running for office, but especially Sotomayor, it is clear she does not have the courage of her leftist convictions. She is a big believer in affirmative action, but she will not dare go public and act as a crusader for it, because she knows it's not a winner. So these people, Sonia Sotomayor, what you should be learning from these hearings if you're watching is how she's trying to bury who she really is. That's the whole point of this. That's the way she was rehearsed, bury who she is. The liberals know that if they are wide open and honest, verbally, about things that they believe and say and want to do -- this is eventually what's going to trip up Obama, by the way, and Barney Frank and all these people. It's going to trip 'em up. The only question is are we going to have too much of this stuff implemented and making it very difficult to roll it back by the time all this awareness takes place.

This woman knows -- trust me on this, folks. Do not doubt me -- Sonia Sotomayor knows that her views are nowhere near the mainstream. In Ricci, she couldn't afford to write an opinion based on what she really thinks, she wouldn't be sitting here today had she done that. This was all calculated to get here today. Remember, she was first touted for the Supreme Court I think by Clinton back in '98, so she's been on the so-called fast track among the elites and the glitterati in the DC legal circles, and so that Ricci decision of hers, she was going to decide it the way her heart and mind told her to but she wasn't going to be public about why because it would not have helped her whatsoever. So she's not a crusader in the public sense. She's not out there standing up for affirmative action, "I really believe in it, this is what we need," she's trying to hide that fact which tells everybody affirmative action and the things that she believes are not mainstream.

She is not the middle of the road. She is a radical on the left like Obama is. She believes in affirmative action enough that she couldn't write an opinion disavowing -- I'll tell you something else. You know what would have been very easy for her to do today? When the whole wise Latina thing came up, when Sessions brought it up, all she would have to say was, "You know what, I misspoke, really, I misspoke and I shouldn't have said that, that doesn't represent --" and everybody would have applauded and it would have been buried, but she didn't, she tried to excuse it and reposition it and say that she didn't really say it or that she said it but this is what she meant by it, that it was taken out of context. I don't know how you take those things out of context. She could have very easily just swept this away by saying, "I misspoke and I'm happy for the opportunity here to tell the nation I misspoke." And what's anybody going to do there? If you go after her then, then you appear to be mean-spirited and all that, and she coulda shut this down and she didn't. Why didn't she shut it down? Because she believes what she did in Ricci is right. She probably views being overturned by the Supreme Court in Ricci a huge setback for the country as she views it to be.

So in the end -- and very smart legal beagles will tell you this if you don't trust me -- she buried the Ricci case in an unpublished opinion that makes sure the affirmative action position wins but doesn't dare try to defend it publicly. That's Sonia Sotomayor. That is why it is imperative that people understand who she really is and what these hearings are really all about. We're not going to get the real Sonia Sotomayor unless these Republicans continue to push and push and push, go back to Ricci, "I'm not satisfied with your answer, sounds to me like you really wanted to bury your decision here." And, by the way, that would be totally proper. We're getting here to judicial philosophy, which is not pubic hair in a Coke can. We're getting to judicial policy. It would be entirely proper for every Republican to go back to Ricci, go back to the wise Latina thing, because in that Ricci decision she buried what she really believes, hoping nobody would ever see it, now she's called on it here, and she cites something called precedent, which there wasn't any precedent in the case. She is hiding who she is.

The left is practiced at this because in their hearts they know they are not the majority of thinking in this country. See, that doesn't matter to them because the democratic process is largely irrelevant to them. That's why there are things like ACORN and other ways to gain and hold power outside of elections using the judiciary, for example, as that. They don't care that public opinion really doesn't favor them. They know that it doesn't. That just makes them have more contempt for the public. So it's a fascinating thing to watch here, but it hasn't changed my mind any. This is a stealth radical who's doing everything possible to keep her radicalness hidden and buried. And of course there are many other radicals in this room, starting with Pat Leahy and going on down the line to Chuck-U Schumer and Dianne Feinstein, there are a lot of radicals on this committee just exactly like Sotomayor, and they're doing everything they can to help her bury who she really is. The Republicans can put them on defense. It's interesting to see how hard they push.

Speaking of pushing hard, all this business Obama going out to Michigan today, seeks a boost there, the people in Michigan are saying, "We are Ground Zero when it comes to the economic meltdown. We're looking at 20% unemployment. It's about time he got here." That's what Democrats in Michigan are saying. If I were you people in Michigan, the worst thing could possibly happen to you is that Obama's coming and gonna announce more policies. You people in Michigan -- I know, those of you in this audience listening in Michigan, you know why your state's in trouble and you know why some of the cities are in trouble. They've been run by Democrats for way too many years, raising taxes, crime is up, people are out of work, the auto companies have their problems now and here's the guy that's the architect of nine-and-a-half percent unemployment, the architect of just unimaginable debt going to Detroit to help?

This is like when you see Geraldo Rivera on Fox you know that somebody's died. In fact, when I was watching Michael Jackson the first day, when it was rumored that he had died, but nobody was reporting it, I knew, I knew that when Fox put Geraldo on, Michael Jackson was dead. Geraldo is the grim reaper. I don't care who it is, somebody dives off a cruise ship, somebody gets tossed off a cruise ship, somebody has a drug overdose, when Geraldo shows up, somebody's dead. And Michigan, you've got the equivalent of the economic grim reaper showing up here. A guy that believes in everything that's been done in that state that has caused your economic problems is showing up with Biden's teleprompter, backup teleprompter and no questions. It was a town hall, now it's just a speech.

RUSH: And here's another question, ladies and gentlemen, about Sonia Sotomayor and the decision in Ricci. Obama said we need people with "empathy," and she used empathy, not the law, in deciding against the white firefighters. Why doesn't she just say, "I was empathizing with the minority"? Why not just say it? Where's the empathy here? It's a huge qualification, is it not? Obama says it's a huge qualification. Well, I would think, then, that Sotomayor could say she was empathizing. She was using empathy as the president said he wants in justices. But she didn't, did she? I'm telling you: the woman's hiding who she is. Many liberals have to.

RUSH: Charles in Jefferson City, Missouri. Great to have you. It's the state capital out there for those of you in Rio Linda. Nice to have you with us. Hello.

CALLER: I wanted to say something about Sotomayor. Years ago I read your book and, of course, listened to you through the years and one of the things I learned from you is that liberals excuse themselves from the rules and laws that they put on others, and Sotomayor is just like that. She lies, she gives a misrepresentation about what she really believes, and, you know, that's typical. It's not just a reflection of Obama. It's a reflection of every other liberal. It's a reflection of Leahy, of Reid, of Pelosi, of all these people.

RUSH: Exactly right. Exactly right. You have these people who don't dare publicly say what they really believe. Even in her legal opinion in Ricci or in her testimony, don't say what you really believe because it's killer. This is one of the things that heartens me, as I say, it also gives me pause at the same time, because it still works. But it heartens me that these people still can't be up-front honest about who they are and what their plans are. Interestingly enough, though, I will contradict myself. Obama is doing exactly what he wrote in his books he was going to do. Now, in his speeches he is not out saying, "I want to destroy the US economy." He is saying, "I want to remake America." And they mean the same thing, but he doesn't have the guts to tell us. The liberals don't care what you think. The more of you who disagree with them, the more contempt for you they have. Democratic and liberalism cancel each other out. They conflict.

RUSH: Jeff Sessions was precise and terrific when he got his chance at Sonia Sotomayor today. During his 30-minute questioning period, he dissected every statement that she has made; properly analyzed it; and asked her about it. Here's one. He said to her, "You previously said that the court of appeals 'is where policy is made,' and you said on another occasion, 'The law that lawyers practice examine judges declare is not a definitive, capital-L law that many would like to think exists.' So I guess I'm asking today: What do you really believe on those subjects?"

SOTOMAYOR: In that conversation with the students, I was focusing on what district court judges do and what circuit court judges do -- and I noted that district court judges find the facts, and they apply the facts to the individual case. And when they do that, their holding, their finding doesn't bind anybody else. Appellate judges, however, establish precedent. I think if my speech is heard outside of the minute-and-a-half that YouTube presents and its full context examined, that it's veeeery clear that I was talking about the policy ramifications of precedent and never talking about appellate judges or courts making the policy that Congress makes.

RUSH: This is a clear example of what I was talking about earlier. This answer is a total fudge. She meant it when she says judges make policy. That's how liberals view courts! That's exactly what she meant, but she knows if she says that in this hearing, she got big problems. So she's gotta fudge it. Well, let's go back and let's listen to what she said. Here's the comment. They're all referring to. It's from February 25th, 2005, in Durham, North Carolina, at the Duke University School of Law.

SOTOMAYOR: All of the legal defense funds out there, they're looking for people with court of appeals experience, because it is -- court of appeals is -- where policy is made. And I know, and I know this is on tape and I should never say that because we don't make law. I know.

SOTOMAYOR: Okay, I know. I know. I'm not... I'm not promoting it, I'm not advocating it, I'm...

RUSH: She admits it! I mean, it's in the whole bite. (paraphrased) "I shouldn't say this, let's all chuckle about it because we're all of the same mind we're. I shouldn't say this on tape. The court of appeals is where policy is made." She's talking... Folks, it's like everything else that's happening in these hearings. She is fudging what she really means in order to get confirmed. She's lying, in other words. Even though she said it seven times, she said today she didn't mean it. Jeff Sessions: "Do you stand by your statement that 'my experiences affect the facts I choose to see'? Do you stand by that statement? She said, "My experience as a wise Latina affects the facts I choose to see.' Do you stand by that statement?"

SOTOMAYOR: No, sir, I don't stand by the understanding of that statement, that I will ignore other facts or other experiences because I haven't had them. I do believe that life experiences are important to the process of judging. They help you to understand and listen, but that the law requires a result, and it will command you to the facts that are relevant to the disposition of the case.

SESSIONS: Well, I will just note you made that statement in individual speeches about seven times over a number of years' span, and it's a concern to me.

RUSH: She didn't mean it, though. She said it seven times but she didn't mean it. No. She doesn't stand by the understanding of that statement that I will ignore facts and so forth. But she said, "My experiences affect the facts I choose to see." Look, in all of her speeches she's telling us who she is. She just won't do it with the national spotlight. Next Sessions: "How can you reconcile your speeches -- which repeatedly assert that impartiality is a mere aspiration, which may not be possible in all or even most cases? How do you reconcile that with your oath that you've taken twice, which requires impartiality?"

SOTOMAYOR: I was using a rhetorical flourish that fell flat. I knew that Justice O'Connor couldn't have meant that if judges reach different conclusions, legal conclusions, that one of them wasn't wise. So I was trying to play on her words. My play was... Fell flat. It was bad. Because it left an impression that I believed that life experiences commanded a result in a case, but that's clearly not what I do as a judge.

RUSH: And once again Ms. Sotomayor is misleading -- and I'll be charitable there. She's misleading everybody, rambling incoherently trying to change the subject from who she really is and what she really believes. Sessions was great on this subject today. Let's move on. We're going to skip number 15, Mike. This is the Ricci decision. Senator Sessions: "You've stated that your background 'affects the facts you choose to see.' Was the fact that the New Haven firefighters had been subject to discrimination one of the facts you chose not to see in that case?"

SOTOMAYOR: A variety of different judges on the appellate court were looking at the case in light of established Supreme Court and Second Circuit precedent and determined that the city, facing potential liability under Title VII, could choose not to certify the test if it believes an equally good test could be made with a different impact on affected groups. The Supreme Court, as it is -- is prerogative, looking at a challenge, established a new consideration, or a different standard for the city to apply, and that is: Was there substantial evidence that they would be held liable under the law? That was a new consideration. Our panel didn't look at that issue that way because it wasn't argued to us in the case before us.

RUSH: Now, that is just a total distraction. That is the worst of all of these. She buried what she really believed. That was an unpublished opinion in a summary judgment case. She was finding for the minority because they were the minority, pure and simple. She was ignoring every other aspect of it, ignoring the Constitution -- and she was even called on that fact. One more. Sessions: "Do you think that Frank Ricci, the other firefighters whose claims you dismissed felt their arguments and concerns were appropriately understood and acknowledged by such a short opinion from your court?"

SOTOMAYOR: We were very sympathetic and expressed our sympathy to Mr. Ricci and the others. We understood the efforts that they had made in taking the tests. We said as much. They did have before them a 78-page thorough opinion by the district court. They obviously disagreed with the law as it stood under Second Circuit precedent. That's why they were pursuing their claims and did pursue them further. The panel was dealing with precedent and arguments that relied on our precedent.

RUSH: And that's another thing. This precedent business, stare decisis, "Well, I'll go for precedent every time I can except when I won't. Precedent is not locked. Precedent doesn't mean you can never vary. If precedent meant that, we'd still have slavery. I mean, they overturned it. It was the Roger Taney court with the Dred Scott decision that was dead wrong about slavery. But if we had relied on precedent as something rock solid we can't move, where would we be today?" Following precedent, my rear end. That's not at all what she was doing. She was very sympathetic -- and remember that's what Ruth "Buzzi" Ginsburg said, "While the court sympathizes with..." That's not what they want when they go before a court. That doesn't get 'em anything. They want justice!

RUSH: By the way, folks, on this wise Latina comment, just to put this in its proper perspective, even CNN pointed out one of the times -- I've got the webpage here -- one of the times that Sotomayor made her wise Latina comment she added a contrast to white men. "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience, would, more often than not, reach a better conclusion than your average white man." That sentence, or a similar one, has appeared in Sotomayor speeches delivered in 1994, in 1999, in 2002, in 2004 and 2001. And in the 2001 speech is where she included the phrase "than a white male who hasn't lived that life," she added that at the end and that's what's sparked the cries of racism here from me and others, but, let's see -- one, two, three, four, five years different speeches she's made the comment and today she tries to say it's a rhetorical flourish or was taken out of context or just outright deny it. Now, here's why Sonia Sotomayor, in a very simple way of explaining it, is dangerous. You heard her say -- in fact, I may want you to hear her say it again. I need sound bite number 14 to illustrate the forthcoming brilliant point. Are you ready? Here it is.

RUSH: That's enough. "I knew that Justice O'Connor couldn't have meant what she said." "I knew that Justice O'Connor couldn't have meant what she said." If Sonia Sotomayor is willing to, in open testimony, say, Justice O'Connor couldn't have meant what she said, how simple and easy would it be for her to say the Founders couldn't possibly have meant whatever they said when they wrote the Constitution. They couldn't possibly have meant this. Even though they wrote it down in clear declarative statements. Sonia Sotomayor says about Sandra Day O'Connor, so her literal words couldn't have meant what they said. She had to have meant that she was talking about the equal value of a capacity to be fair and impartial. She couldn't have meant what she said. If she can say that about Sandra Day O'Connor, she can look at the Constitution and say, "They didn't mean that." And this one little example is all you need to know how dangerous this woman is.

Our Constitution is not safe with this woman interpreting it, because if she can say Sandra Day O'Connor didn't mean what she said, then she can say the same thing about any of the Founding Fathers and authors of the Constitution. Now, to show you how effective Jeff Sessions was, we have here samples of the State-Run Media reacting to Sessions. Remember, now, she's the one who has used this term "wise Latina" in speeches over five years, richness of her experience in one of the speeches she said she's be a better judge than a white man. Chris Matthews is talking to this guy Richard Wolffe on MSNBC, says, "She didn't make these mea culpas on her own before the process began. She didn't choose to qualify her statements 'til she had to here in this hearing."

WOLFFE: Sessions, of course, is well within his rights to push her on these comments, but the majority of these questions were focused on race. He's playing racial politics, too, and that's a very sensitive area for Republicans in general.

WOLFFE: Well, hey, look, Alabama politics on one side, this is also Republicans on a national stage.

MATTHEWS: You said yesterday, this was a surrogate fight over the direction of the country politically. And the sympathy of the Democratic Party generally espouses towards minorities generally, right?

RUSH: So she's the racist and they turn it around and say that Sessions is the racist. Sotomayor is the one who used the phrase "wise Latina" and the richness of her experiences would make her a better judge than the average white guy. She is the racist. State-Run Media attacks Jeff Sessions, 'cause he's from Alabama, why he's gotta be a racist just like those three kids at Duke had to rape that dancer, she was black, she was poor, she was a dancer, they're rich elite athletes at a power school. Of course they raped her. We don't even need to know the facts, of course they did. Uh, no, they didn't. Okay never mind. So now Jeff Sessions is the racist.

RUSH: Christian in Somerset, New Jersey, great to have you with us on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Good. Rush, I sit there and I cringe sometimes when I listen to you. Sotomayor, in her speech today -- in her answer today -- clearly said, um that Sandra Day O'Connor, if the outcome between a wise old woman and a wise old man were different -- if they came to different conclusions -- then she couldn't have meant that one of them was not wise. She didn't disagree with O'Connor. She didn't look at it and say, "Her original premise is not what she meant."

CALLER: -- and say, "That's not what our Founders meant." That's a stretch. That's a stretch!

RUSH: Christian, back off. It's not a stretch at all. If she'll take Sandra Day O'Connor's words and say, "She didn't mean that," then she can just as easily to say that about James Madison.

CALLER: She didn't say that she didn't mean that they would not come to the same conclusions. She didn't take her original statement and say, "That's not what she meant." She carried it a step further.

RUSH: Hold it a minute! We're going to listen to this sound bite together. Grab number 14 again. Now, this is --

CALLER: Rush, I'm waiting to go into my appointment. If I have to hang up, I'm sorry.

RUSH: That's all right. This will take 30 seconds. No more than 30 seconds. Play number 14. We'll listen together.

SOTOMAYOR: I knew that Justice O'Connor couldn't have meant that if judges reach different conclusions, legal conclusions, that one of them wasn't wise.

CALLER: She couldn't have meant if they came up to diff-rent con-clu-sionssss. Sandra Day O'Connor was saying that they should come to the same conclusions. But if they came to different conclusions, she couldn't have meant that one of them was unwise. It's maybe a fine point, Rush, but it in no way means or could mean that she would then go --

RUSH: Yeah, well, let's take context, Christian, because if you take that with everything else that she's hiding today, I --

RUSH: It's my fault, okay. Fine, all right. That's the way it goes. It's the way it goes. "Screw you, Rush." It's my fault. Bye, Christian.

OBAMA: There were people who celebrated on the South Side. I'm not one of those guys. I wish them well unless they're playing the White Sox. But I do think that there's a different quality to what used to be Comiskey Field versus Wrigley.

RUSH: What used to be "Cominskey Field." It's Comiskey Park. There's no "N" in there, but this guy was brought up by communists, so all these inskys have made an indelible impression on his mind like Saul Alinsky, and so he thinks it's Cominskey Park. Cominskey Field is Comiskey Park, and, by the way, the White Sox now play in US Cellular Field, nicknamed The Cell, and the White Sox won the World Series in 2005 when Obama was there. You would think that comparing the Cubs and White Sox he's got Wrigley Field to "Cominskey Field."

My comment: I know that if you are a Democrat, you are thinking, who cares? What’s the big deal? Or you may even be a little offended by this, thinking that Republicans are looking for every single little thing they can find. It is like this: if you know anything about politics, you know Bush mispronounced nuclear; you saw him walk to a door which was locked (Obama did almost exactly the same thing, but you never saw that); and almost everyone of us recalls the vice president who could not spell potato (hmmm, I wonder if that was a Republican or a Democratic VP?). It is our news media which attempts to convince us that Republicans are these goofy, stumblebums who cannot speak or spell English. On the other hand, Democrats are brilliant speakers and therefore, brilliant thinkers. It is all a lie meant to build a false impression, and this is not something which the Democratic party does, but what the so-called news does.

RUSH: The Sunday New York Times published a recent interview with Supreme Court Justice Ruth "Buzzi" Ginsburg, and after expressing her annoyance over a 1980 decision that forbids using Medicaid tax dollars for abortions, Justice Ginsburg said this. I want to quote it: "Frankly, I had thought at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don't want to have too many of. So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion," unquote. Now, "growth in populations that we don't want to have too many of..."? That's Planned Parenthood! That was the original goal of Planned Parenthood. The original goal of Planned Parenthood was to abort various minorities out of existence.

That was the original purpose. I think in Ruth "Buzzi" Ginsburg's case, when she says that she thinks Roe was about "population growth, particularly growth in populations who don't have too many of," she's probably thinking about aborting conservatives. But the problem with that is it's the liberals that are aborting each other, or themselves, their future generations. Now, what's astounding about this is that a matriarch of modern liberalism was candid about the underlying objective of the abortion movement: That is to rid society of entire populations deemed "unworthy." Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, was an early proponent of this. It's called eugenics, and her aim was to wipe out the African-American population.

Other infamous world figures acted upon similar instincts using other means to achieve their objectives: Concentration camps, mass gassings, so-called ethnic cleansings. Planned Parenthood is no different. Margaret Sanger's Planned Parenthood is no different than any of the people that use concentration camps, mass gassings, so-called ethnic cleansings. And what's just ironic as it can be is that the primary supporters of Planned Parenthood are liberals. But here comes Ruth "Buzzi" Ginsburg just out of the box admitting what this is all about. Now, it is all about "a woman's right to choose." I mean, that's the umbrella under which it all happens. But the thing about this group, Planned Parenthood... You put up an adoption center next to an abortion clinic and what will happen is the Planned Parenthood people come out and try to keep every pregnant woman possible from going into the adoption center.

There's money involved and all of that. Now, Justice Ginsburg has not yet stated which American population she would like to see wiped out using Medicaid, taxpayer-funded abortions. The New York Times interviewer didn't ask. Perhaps she assumed that New York Times readers already know what population of Ruth "Buzzi"... I'm mentioning this now because we got another one of these type people being investigated today at confirmation hearings. Sonia Sotomayor is probably right down the path with justice Ruth "Buzzi" Ginsburg on this issue. Well, see, to somebody like me who can read the stitches on the fastball and read between the lines, Justice Ginsburg's remarks tell the real story. They ought to dispel for all time any notion that the abortion movement is about privacy or choice or freedom, and it should also tell you why they are so damned... (I must say this) insistent that Medicaid -- that's poor people medical care -- money be used for abortions. I'll tell you why liberals reacted so strongly to my term "feminazi." My term feminazi hit waaaaay too close to home.

Now, just imagine, if you will, what would happen, if a person from the abstinence movement made a statement like this? It would be in the front page of every paper in the United States. Instead, you have to look to find these articles about Ginsburg.

RUSH: In talking about the travesty that was the Social Security Administration junket and relaxation tour with dancers and spas and hotel suites and so forth at the Biltmore in Phoenix, I said, "Seven hundred executives spent $700,000 in three days," and I said, "That's a hundred thousand dollars per executive." I said it three or four times. Now earlier today, I spent a number of moments illustrating how a Supreme Court nominee is butchering the English language. Go back and grab sound bites one through four. Let's just let you hear these. This is Sonia Sotomayor. The first cut is December 10th, 2007.

SOTOMAYOR: This first seven who are gonna be hired, only because of the (pause) uh, vagrancies (sic) of the vacancies at that moment.

SOTOMAYOR: Under New York law, if you are being threatened with eminent (sic) death or very serious injury --

RUSH: Eminent, with an E, as she said? No. "Imminent" is momentary, instantaneous, right-in-front-of-you there. That is "imminent" with an I and two M's. Here's the third example.

SOTOMAYOR: -- is educate themselves. They build up a story (sic) of knowledge about legal thinking.

RUSH: It's a "store" of knowledge. People build up a" store of knowledge," not story. We don't have her on tape saying "nuclear." I don't know how she says it. She also referred to the NLRB as the National Labor "Relationships" Board, when it's the National Labor Relations Board -- and here's the fourth example on tape.

SOTOMAYOR: All questions of policy are within the providence (sic) of Congress first.

RUSH: Uh, not "providence." It's province. Now, she does this, and of course it takes me pointing it out. There may be some other guys on our side doing it, I don't know. But nobody, nobody is saying a word about it. If this were a Republican nominee, my gosh! It would be all we would be hearing. So then what happens? So I take the Social Security story and say, "Seven executives, a big bash for three days, 700 grand it cost," and I say, "It's a hundred thousand dollars per executive," and I am deluged with e-mails from people. "No, no, no, no, no, Rush! Your math is way off. It's very simple. It's a thousand dollars per person." You see, I am right so often that when I make a mistake it is glaring and people just loooove to run in and correct me. I can't get away with Sonia Sotomayor's things. I mean, sometimes I misspeak. I'll say Coeur d'Alene, "Iowa," instead of "Idaho," and the same thing will happen. I'll get deluuuged from people. They have my best interests at heart. I'm just saying that with poor old Sonia Sotomayor, nobody has these high expectations of her.

RUSH: This New York Times story that came up on Sunday about Cheney and the CIA and a secret plan... you know, this is classic. The plan was never implemented. It was a secret plan, Cheney and the CIA, basically to target Al-Qaeda operatives. And now everybody's having a cow over Cheney doing something secret and not telling anybody about it, and all this is is an attempt to give cover for Nancy Pelosi. The story is that there has been a plan since 2001 to target and capture and kill Al-Qaeda leaders, 9/11, 2001, and Leon Panetta ended it when he found out. That's the story. The story is the Democrats ended it. That's what everybody needs to know when it comes to the Democrat's national security and foreign policy. This is just absurd.

Wall Street Journal: "CIA Had a Plan to Capture and Kill Al-Qaeda." Well, we should hope so! What the hell else would you do after 9/11? Doesn't that seem sort of like a natural flow? We lose the World Trade Center, part of the Pentagon, and people on a plane in Pennsylvania, and so we implement a plan with the CIA to capture and kill Al-Qaeda. I would sure as hell hope that's what was happening. Now, the revelation that this is the plan that the Democrats were pretending to be so outraged about -- and this is the New York Times story, the New York Times story did not say what the plan was. Secret CIA plane, go get Cheney, let's chase Cheney again. All this does, this confirms that this is just nothing more than an attempt to cover up Pelosi's lies about her waterboarding briefings. That's all this story's purpose is, is to give her cover, and perhaps to further the cause that Eric Holder has announced that he wants to go back and actually prosecute the Bush administration for war crimes because of torture.

Folks, that doesn't happen in the United States of America. Administrations change, they go into the past, the current one leads to the future. It's in banana republics and totalitarian dictatorships where you go back and criminally prosecute your predecessors for the purpose of seeing to it that they never surface again. This is how far Pelosi and the Democrats will go to protect themselves, and the media, by the way, protect their ruling elites.

Another stimulus (because, remember, when the government sends billions of dollars out the door, that means that some players get a little sugar for themselves):

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 #84	Kukis Digests and Opines on this Week’s News and Views	July 19, 2009