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

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

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

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

The president addresses school children on Tuesday, both houses of Congress on Wednesday, and a few townhall meetings after these speeches.

During the presidential speech to both houses of Congress, Joe Wilson yells, “You lie” when the president said that his health care bill would not cover illegal aliens.

In a related story, Joe Wilson raises $3/4 million in less that 24 hours toward his next campaign.

President Obama promises that his bill (which does not exist) will be deficit neutral. Nancy Pelosi also promises to present a bill which will be deficit neutral.

In an messy divorce, a child who has been home schooled was ordered by a New Hampshire court to attend public schools. The girl actually attended public schools in order to get specific courses, but the problem area was her Christian faith—the girl was too adamant in her faith in Jesus Christ. Therefore, the court ordered her to attend a public school in order to balance out her faith. This girl was in the custody of her mother and home schooled by her mother.

Newt Gingrich: “The country is not interested in what the president wants. The country is interested in what the country wants. The country for 2 months has been trying to tell the president that is does not want government rationing; it does not want bigger spending; it does not want decisions centralized in Washington. The country is pretty clear in 1000 person townhall meetings; in every poll that I have seen; the Gallup data has been devastatingly clear.”

John Boehner, before Obama gave his health care speech, remarked, “I think the American people have made it clear they don’t want another lecture; they want a new plan.”

Black radio personality Mason Weaver speaking at D.C. demonstration: “I came to speak to you because I thought you wanted to hear a black man speak to you without a teleprompter.”

Andrew Breitbart, “You don’t dress dogs” when asked to identify any problem people at the various tea parties (some people put American flag clothes on their dogs).

Conan O’Brien said that, “While Nancy Pelosi was on vacation, her botox treatments were toned down from ‘just tasered’ to ‘an ice cube down my blouse.’ ”

Iran says they are willing to meet with the United States with regards to global warming measures; they are not interested in chatting about weapons or their nuclear program.

Officials with the controversial community organizing group ACORN were secretly videotaped offering to assist two individuals posing as a pimp and a prostitute, encouraging them to lie to the Internal Revenue Service and providing guidance on how to claim underage girls from South America as dependents.

A week ago, Saturday, FoxNews ran an hour-long special on textbooks and schools. It may be rerun this weekend (I have not checked the schedule yet). Here are the 9–10 minutes sections:

Do You Know what Your Children are Really Reading? Part I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qusQy7Kkpw

The anti-American bias of our school textbooks:. Part II

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fz-Znhtlomo

[Part II begins the segment about Alameda School District in California and the gay penguin book (inserted into the 2^nd grade requirements). If you do not believe that Fox is fair and balanced, watch this clip]

Part III

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLwWyugDEN4

Part IV:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxQLHMtRslo

Part V:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRIXFHTjGAU

Crowds in Washington D.C. chant tell the truth, no more lies, and Glenn Beck to CNN reporter at the D.C. 9-12 demonstration.

MSNBC gives reasonable coverage of the Washington Tea Party (aerial shots are good; and even MSNBC says there are 10's of thousands there):

Glenn Beck on the Communists in Obama’s administration (if you don’t believe this, then you need to watch the videos):

This website is new to me, but it presents a clear, concise approach to the various forms of government in an excellent video:

Hitler is now working for Obama to put down right-wing protesters? Warning: the language is a little harsh:

Just in case you think the death panel thing is overblown, here is our president passing judgment over the quality of another person’s life:

1) Michael Medved had a fantastic show segment the other day (2^nd hour 9/9/09). The guests were Martha Kemper, a proponent of sex education in the schools and Miriam Grossman M.D., who wrote You're Teaching My Child What? I did not pay a lot of attention to this when I was teaching (as a math teacher, I taught a minimum amount of sex ed). However, what stood out to me is, Miriam said that these sex ed proponents were teaching that there are 3 types of sexual intercourse (oral, vaginal and anal), and did not indicate that there are serious health consequences with the latter (these are considered to be equivalent approaches to sexuality). This is taught in some schools as early as grammar school (Martha’s rationale was, some children have sex as early as 8 years old). Although Martha kept saying that they were just trying to educate the children, she did not deny any of this. There was a lot more to this, but that particular factoid stood out in my mind (I had no idea what intercourse was in grammar school and probably in junior high). One of the callers said, “I have an 8 year old girl, and I used to complain about the high tuition that I was paying for a private school, and now I can tell it is worth it.” (Not an exact quote). In any case, Miriam’s point was to preserve the innocence of children as long as possible.

2) Along these same lines, some parents happily relegated sex ed to the schools (I recall how nervous my dad was when he tried to broach the subject with me); however, any time you let the government take over anything, there will be someone who uses any kind of any opening for their own agenda (e.g., teaching about homosexual couples to grammar school kids under the guise of preventing bullying).

3) Judge Napolitano claims that, due to two cases in California which the Supreme Court refused to hear, you cannot provide something for one class of people (e.g., free or subsidized health care for citizens), without providing the same for all classes of people (including illegal aliens).

4) President Obama, in throwing a bone to conservatives (and to the majority of the American public) by saying there might be a little torte reform tried in some limited markets, and overseen by Kathleen Sebelius (who represented trial lawyers for 8 years).

5) Did you notice how, throughout the presidential campaign, there were 46 million uninsured; but, during the president’s health care bill presentation nto the Congress, he only spoke of 30 million who lacked insurance? He is starting to leave out illegal aliens from this tally.

6) As was pointed out by the accu-weather guy on Bill O’Reilly, warmer water in the Pacific would bring more rain to California and cooler water would bring less rain to California. Drought in California is a result of recent cooling and not warming.

7) Charles Krauthammer observed that, during Obama’s hiatus from speaking support for health care increased slightly.

8) President Obama stressed personal responsibility with school children and lack of personal responsibility in his health care speech.

9) One of the Fox All Stars Panel said that Obama has a Tinkerbell approach to various problems. He just wishes and hopes it will come true. Two examples would be the closing of Club Gitmo and his ideas for the health care bill (it has to provide more and better benefits, insure everyone, and be cheaper).

10) When you listen to what a person says, it gives you an idea as to what is in their own souls. For instance, Obama has twice said the some doctors will do additional procedures merely to line their own pockets with more money. If he thinks that a doctor will take out a child’s tonsils or cut off someone’s foot just to make more money, that ought to tell you what kind of a man Obama is.

11) A bad idea proposed by the left and the right: pay doctors for outcomes rather than procedures. If a doctor looks at you, and the procedure might have a 30% chance at saving your life, if he is paid only for saving your life, he may not suggest that procedure. There will be a percentage at which an individual doctor will draw the line at doing that procedure. In the past, the more times a doctor does a procedure, often the more we learn about that procedure nd how to refine it to improve the results. Only paying a doctor for outcomes is a bad idea.

12) Similarly, requiring that all insurance companies cover existing conditions is also a bad idea. If you could purchase fire insurance while your house is burning, how do you think that would affect the cost of fire insurance?

13) In the FoxNews special on textbooks, those people and groups who actually write the texts and make them politically correct would not, for the most part, speak to FoxNews on camera. One person was ambushed, and one person spoke to FoxNews, just dripping with contempt. When asked about questionable passages in the books for an Islam school which seemed to encourage violence against infidels; the man first gave a succinct and unintelligible explanation and then said, “Let me explain this in such a way that even your viewers can understand,” he said, dripping with contempt, “Just because the words are there, it does not make a person go out and do anything.” (Not an exact quote).

14) In this show, it was pointed out that a Prentice Hall book on history failed to mentioned that the 9/11 terrorists were Muslim.

15) Judaism and Christianity are often presented with qualifiers (e.g., many Christians believe that Jesus is God); but no such qualifiers are present when describing Islam.

16) Let me explain why government welfare, in general, is a bad idea. Once you get on government welfare of any kind (food stamps, section 8 housing, etc.), you like getting something for nothing, and most people try to continue this as long as they possibly can. If this was a private charity, and you have to go back month after month after month and ask for help, that is a more difficult thing to do. With government, it becomes automatic, and you find out how to get more and more, as long as you remain unproductive. With a private charity, you have no incentive to remain unproductive.

As one example, the Sacramento Bee, a far-left newspaper, ignored the Van Jones story until it finally could not longer do so (Van Jones was a highly visible member of the Obama administration and so, his resignation could not be ignored). The Sacramento Bee continues to give a slanted view of this story, giving Van Jones’ side of the story (“I was the victim of a smear campaign”) while ignoring most of his quotes which got him to this place (e.g., saying that white racist polluters intentionally pour out their pollution on Black people and on the workers in the fields). Any reporter can search Van Jones on YouTube and get a variety of quotes. Furthermore, the Bee could have mentioned that Van Jones first apologized twice for his remarks (why apologize if what you said was right on?). The Bee did not point out that Van Jones first denied signing the 9/11 truther petition and then later denied knowing what this petition said. The Bee could have at least written, Yale graduate Van Jones was unable to understand the 9/11 truther petition. And, at least on their website, link to that petition (which is not hard for me, a non-Yale grad, to understand).

On the Bee’s website is a plethora of comments about this story, which indicates to me that there are a lot of interested and informed potential readers for the Bee out there, but that the Bee ignores, to its own detriment.

The virtual news blackout of ACORN employees on two occasions trying to help a pimp and his whore buy a house and defraud Uncle Sam.

Are you aware that one of Obama’s Czars believes that animals should have the right to sue you?

Overemphasize the number of times Obama calls his opponents liars in the health care speech, let Joe Wilson call out, “You lie” and then show the headlines the next morning—Joe Wilson calls the President a liar.

[This is a new column describing what various politicians have done which have set into motion various events which force their opponents to act; I will also apply this to the media and include both intentional and inadvertent chess moves. The idea is, in chess, you are always thinking several moves in advance in order to anticipate your opponents moves so that you have a strategy already lined up to defeat them].

Obama and the school speech: Obama and his staff have been hyper-partisan, so they knew that addressing the children would be a hot-button issue for conservatives. So, they release the lesson plans well in advance of Obama’s speech. This allows the Obama-faithful, regardless of what happens later, to download these lesson plans and use them. The Republicans throw a fit, Obama withdraws the lesson plans (which are already download by many), and then releases the text for and then gives a vanilla speech. The media can cite this as an example of the hyper-partisan Republicans (who could not ignore this), and praise Obama for being flexible and withdrawing these lesson plans. End result, those who would use Obama’s lesson plans got them and used them; and Republicans look like hyper-partisan doofuses for throwing such a fit over such a vanilla speech. I think this was all intentional.

The media is involved in political chess. They cannot completely ignore what is gonig on in the world, but they can present it when it suits them. So it was with the Van Jones story. They ignored the information on Van Jones completely. Before he resigned, there was nothing in the mainstream media about him and the insane things which he had said. However, after Van Jones resigns, the media cannot ignore this. So, they mention, with very little detail, why Van Jones resigned; and they give most of the coverage to his explanation (“These republicans lied about me and smeared me, so I had to resign not to be a distraction” not an exact quote). So, those who get their news from the mainstream media believe that there was just this vicious partisan attack against Jones. Most do not realize that the problem was, videos of what he has actually said. Ignoring the story until they could no longer ignore it and then limiting the facts was all intentional.

Souther Carolinian Representative Joe Wilson, in the middle of President Obama’s speech, cried out, “You lie” when Obama claimed the his health care bill would not give coverage to illegal aliens. The end result is, Joe Wilson gets a lot of coverage, and, to some degree, the issue of covering illegal aliens must be covered in this same news coverage. Even though the new coverage will be biased against Joe, he is able to get out a few salient points. I do not believe that this was intentional—I think that his outburst was organic and in-the-moment—but I would not be shocked if it turned out that Joe planned to do this all along.

Talking about bi-partisan ideas, when not a single idea in the Obama-care bill (the one from the house) has any Republican ideas in it.

1) Does he advocate real tort reform? Curbing lawsuit abuse by putting a cap on non-economic awards is the only way to reduce health care costs. And Obama has said cutting costs is his top priority.

2) Does he offer anything of significance to Republicans? Not just kind words, but actual concessions such as no tax increases as part of Obamacare or a requirement that those getting subsidized health insurance show proof of citizenship. I could go on and on. Saying he's not demanding a public insurance plan doesn't count. Democrats have already killed it.

3) Does he once again trot out the straw man that the only alternative to ObamaCare is "doing nothing"? Republicans do have alternatives. So do Democrats like Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon.

4) Does he demonize health providers he's made deals with -- insurers, pharmaceutical companies, doctors, hospitals? A president who says he wants a cool, rational discussion of health care issues would not use this tactic.

5) Does he repeat any of the untruths from his stump speeches? That abortion would not be covered at all in Obamacare or that no one could lose his current health insurance and so on.

You think that those who are opposed to Obama-care are either fanatics, confused or brainwashed.

Baby boomers are getting older and you know what we like, now that we are too old to engage in the hedonism that we are famous for? The news, politics, and, even, religion. Some newspaper or some television station is going to recognize this and begin pandering (in a good way) to this massive baby boomer audience. However, for those of us whose motto used to be don’t trust anyone over 30, we do not being lied to by the media. We will tolerate an opposing view, but we will not tolerate that which we view is continually biased. If a newspaper group or a television station recognizes this, it could make a ton of money. I am not saying that this will happen, because despite record losses in readership, newspapers continue to present the same old propaganda which drives away readers. The same is true of the 3 primary television networks. When one of them hits rock bottom, then look for a change (CBS might be the first network to tank).

O’Reilly and FoxNews have proven that there is a vast viewership out there interested in what is going on today, and willing to tolerate a variety of viewpoints (in fact, interested in a variety of viewpoints). Someday (I hope), a major network or newspaper group figures this out as well.

This is not a prophecy of mine fulfilled; this is the founder of the John Birch Society speaking in 1958 (you will be amazed):

The one thing that Obama has done which most conservatives approve of is, he has continued the George Bush wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Even though there have been some missteps and problems, there is no reason to assume the Commander-in-Chief George Bush would not be having the same problems. Any time efforts are stepped up in any war situation, there are more casualties; therefore, the additional casualties in Afghanistan do not represent Obama fumbling the war effort, but simply a stepping up of the necessary war in Afghanistan (his words).

And, despite his spin and rhetoric, nothing has changed in Iraq. Even though he was very clear that he was going to bring our troops home in 16 months, he has not done that.

In my opinion—and, admittedly, this is just speculation—there are several reasons for this. Although Democrats will never admit to it, and historians try to cover it up, a sudden de-funding of the war in Vietnam was one of America’s worst mistakes ever. We were a few months away of winning this war, and had we stayed with it, we would have prevented a bloodbath in South Vietnam and in Cambodia. So, those in charge of Democratic strategy do not want to repeat Vietnam. History has shown that this was a stupid thing to do (to desert our allies in South Vietnam), and that the domino theory was correct (several Asian countries fell to communism, as did several South American countries as a result). So, even though Obama won with the far, far left anti-war movement, his brain trust knows that taking a victory handed to him by George Bush and dropping the ball would confirm the perception that Democrats are weak, thus losing their moderate support for a generation or two.

Secondly, I think that Obama, in getting daily reports about our national security, may have changed his mind about a few things. He may realize that he cannot simply talk his way into a satisfactory peace in Iraq and Afghanistan. I don’t think that Obama is completely turned around; I believe that he still has this unrealistic view of himself that he can give a speech, and good things will happen. However, I think he has a slightly more realistic view of radical Islam now than he did when campaigning for his present position.

For all I know, Obama’s campaign promises about Iraq could have meant nothing to him even at that time; but I think the reasons I have cited are a more accurate appraisal of the situation.

However, what Obama is not is a man who knows anything about other nations. He can give a great speeches and be praised by liberal media sources all over the world, and I think that he narcistically buys into that.

Thirdly, I think that Obama thought that he could give the order, and it would be done. That is, he would bring in all the generals and say, “I want you guys to do this” and they would say, “Okay.” However, I suspect that the first time the Obama tried that approach that he began to hear percentages. “If we start withdrawing troops, there is a 95% chance that, within 3 years, Iraq would erupt into a blazing inferno. Now, we will do whatever you command us to do, but you need to understand the consequences of your commands.” “Okay.”

The 4^th reason which I believe that explains Obama’s hawkishness is, he is profoundly disinterested in world events; particularly in war. I don’t think that he fully understands it, nor does he fully understand why someone would just give their life for their country. This is not something that Obama can relate to, except, perhaps to assume that these young men and woman have no other economic options open to them. I believe that Obama wants to transform America economically, focusing on big government being more and more involved in business, medicine and education, evening out the inequalities in America as much as possible. This interests Obama, and he will do anything and say anything in order to bring these things to pass. So, for the most part, I think he will leave the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan up to his generals without interfering too much.

So, may I present to you, the disinterested, slightly-more realistic war hawk, President Barack Obama.

Some people voted for Obama because he was a Democrat and some people voted against him because he was a Democrat. However, there wre a significant number of people—those who gave Obama the presidency—who voted for him because of what he promised.

He promised an open, transparent administration, which included posting bills online for 5 days so that the American people could read and digest them.

He demonized lobbyists as one of the greatest corrupting institutions in Washington, and promised that they would no longer play a big part in his administration.

He held out the hope of unity, that we are not a collection of blue states and red states, but that we are the United States. He promised that we would work together and have a civil discourse.

For the most part, I can understand how a moderate or someone who is not a die-hard Democrat or Republican be swayed by promoting these principles.

It's been a long time since James Carville said the most famous thing he ever said: It's the economy, stupid. That famous phrase was in fact part of a sign hung in the Clinton campaign headquarters in 1992. There was a sense among the electorate in the fall of 1992, not entirely accurate, that the economy was foundering under George H.W. Bush. Bush lost control of the public's perception of the economy, and then he lost the presidency.

Why with unemployment heading above 10% was Barack Obama on TV last night draining a dwindling reservoir of presidential capital on health care? Redesigning the 17% of the economy that is health care appears to be the siren song of Democratic presidencies. Mr. Obama's crew has famously said it wouldn't make the mistakes the Clintons made on health care. How calling forth both houses of Congress in prime time to join him in betting the ranch on health care qualifies as smarter politics than the Clintons is a mystery.

To save himself and his party from enduring another health-care debacle, Barack Obama should put his agenda on the back burner, bend his efforts to raising the economy, and rebuild his political capital by taking credit for the inevitable rebound. That just might minimize the impending loss of House seats and allow him to revisit his wish list in 2011. The alternative is promising big, accomplishing little and getting credit for nothing. This could be America's greatest failed presidency.

The economy is Barack Obama's 9/11. If you're Mr. Obama, it must seem a little unfair. One year ago at the Labor Day turn toward the stretch, Mr. Obama and his team were on the cusp of one of the most thrilling wins in American presidential history. No matter that many Obama voters were looking past all the state-based initiatives in his politics; the air was filled with possibility.

This was history's moment. Then on Sept. 15, 2008, history hit the wall. Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy. The next day the Fed said it would lend a stunning $85 billion to AIG. A major money-market fund broke the buck.

This wasn't just a recession, a reality already discussed in the summer campaign. There was a sense after the nightmare week of Sept. 15 that the American economy was imploding.

Assets in 401(k) accounts were ravaged. Much of the economy appeared to have fallen into the hands of fools and knaves. Businesses that once were economic beacons-GM, Chrysler, Lehman, much of Wall Street-were breaking off and falling into the sea.

After its Inauguration, the Obama presidency should have been driving a new health-care entitlement into everlasting law on a wave of good will. Instead, it had to deal with the stumbling economy and credit system.

Whether what they did-stimulus, the auto bailout, TARP and the rest-was the right policy is beside the point for our argument. The administration seemed to think it put a big political problem behind it, clearing the way for health care. That was a false dawn.

The most recent Wall Street Journal/NBC poll has 87% of the public somewhat or very dissatisfied with the economy. The unemployment rate is likely to go above 10% for all 2010. Whatever GDP growth may occur, there is no evidence of new-job creation. Gold's price has risen above $1,000, suggesting inflation is swimming below the economy's flat surface. China is stockpiling gold and worrying out loud about the weak dollar. A U.N. panel said this week the world should abandon the dollar as the world's anchor currency.

Just now, Barack Obama's mad obsession with arcane health-insurance puzzles looks beside the point.

I don't think anyone fully understands yet how much damage was done to the U.S. economy and financial system by the events of September 2008. Whatever one's belief in the $800 billion Obama-Pelosi-Summers-Romer Keynesian multiplier, it's reasonable to believe more than rote public spending is needed to restore the American job-creation machine. The public rightly worries that a damaged economy is vulnerable to more blows.

The White House may think it and Democratic incumbents can simply pocket the credit for whatever fly-wheel growth shows up the next six months. It's more likely the public will mark down a president who appears passive to its most pressing concern. A presidency seen leading a genuine agenda for renewed growth-offering at least some oxygen to the private economy-would be more likely to earn the broad support it simply does not have now for the agenda of its dreams.

Fat chance it will do that. We opened with the still-good advice of James Carville. We close with an even higher authority to explain last night's odd spectacle before Congress. It's Elwood, political director for the Blues Brothers: "We're on a mission from God."

Writing in the New York Times last month, President Barack Obama asked that Americans "talk with one another, and not over one another" as our health-care debate moves forward.

I couldn't agree more. Let's engage the other side's arguments, and let's allow Americans to decide for themselves whether the Democrats' health-care proposals should become governing law.

Some 45 years ago Ronald Reagan said that "no one in this country should be denied medical care because of a lack of funds." Each of us knows that we have an obligation to care for the old, the young and the sick. We stand strongest when we stand with the weakest among us.

We also know that our current health-care system too often burdens individuals and businesses-particularly small businesses-with crippling expenses. And we know that allowing government health-care spending to continue at current rates will only add to our ever-expanding deficit.

How can we ensure that those who need medical care receive it while also reducing health-care costs? The answers offered by Democrats in Washington all rest on one principle: that increased government involvement can solve the problem. I fundamentally disagree.

Common sense tells us that the government's attempts to solve large problems more often create new ones. Common sense also tells us that a top-down, one-size-fits-all plan will not improve the workings of a nationwide health-care system that accounts for one-sixth of our economy. And common sense tells us to be skeptical when President Obama promises that the Democrats' proposals "will provide more stability and security to every American."

With all due respect, Americans are used to this kind of sweeping promise from Washington. And we know from long experience that it's a promise Washington can't keep.

Let's talk about specifics. In his Times op-ed, the president argues that the Democrats' proposals "will finally bring skyrocketing health-care costs under control" by "cutting . . . waste and inefficiency in federal health programs like Medicare and Medicaid and in unwarranted subsidies to insurance companies . . . ."

First, ask yourself whether the government that brought us such "waste and inefficiency" and "unwarranted subsidies" in the first place can be believed when it says that this time it will get things right. The nonpartistan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) doesn't think so: Its director, Douglas Elmendorf, told the Senate Budget Committee in July that "in the legislation that has been reported we do not see the sort of fundamental changes that would be necessary to reduce the trajectory of federal health spending by a significant amount."

Now look at one way Mr. Obama wants to eliminate inefficiency and waste: He's asked Congress to create an Independent Medicare Advisory Council-an unelected, largely unaccountable group of experts charged with containing Medicare costs. In an interview with the New York Times in April, the president suggested that such a group, working outside of "normal political channels," should guide decisions regarding that "huge driver of cost . . . the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives . . . ."

Given such statements, is it any wonder that many of the sick and elderly are concerned that the Democrats' proposals will ultimately lead to rationing of their health care by-dare I say it-death panels? Establishment voices dismissed that phrase, but it rang true for many Americans. Working through "normal political channels," they made themselves heard, and as a result Congress will likely reject a wrong-headed proposal to authorize end-of-life counseling in this cost-cutting context. But the fact remains that the Democrats' proposals would still empower unelected bureaucrats to make decisions affecting life or death health-care matters. Such government overreaching is what we've come to expect from this administration.

Speaking of government overreaching, how will the Democrats' proposals affect the deficit? The CBO estimates that the current House proposal not only won't reduce the deficit but will actually increase it by $239 billion over 10 years. Only in Washington could a plan that adds hundreds of billions to the deficit be hailed as a cost-cutting measure.

The economic effects won't be limited to abstract deficit numbers; they'll reach the wallets of everyday Americans. Should the Democrats' proposals expand health-care coverage while failing to curb health-care inflation rates, smaller paychecks will result. A new study for Watson Wyatt Worldwide by Steven Nyce and Syl Schieber concludes that if the government expands health-care coverage while health-care inflation continues to rise "the higher costs would drive disposable wages downward across most of the earnings spectrum, although the declines would be steepest for lower-earning workers." Lower wages are the last thing Americans need in these difficult economic times.

Finally, President Obama argues in his op-ed that Democrats' proposals "will provide every American with some basic consumer protections that will finally hold insurance companies accountable." Of course consumer protection sounds like a good idea. And it's true that insurance companies can be unaccountable and unresponsive institutions-much like the federal government. That similarity makes this shift in focus seem like nothing more than an attempt to deflect attention away from the details of the Democrats' proposals-proposals that will increase our deficit, decrease our paychecks, and increase the power of unaccountable government technocrats.

Instead of poll-driven "solutions," let's talk about real health-care reform: market-oriented, patient-centered, and result-driven. As the Cato Institute's Michael Cannon and others have argued, such policies include giving all individuals the same tax benefits received by those who get coverage through their employers; providing Medicare recipients with vouchers that allow them to purchase their own coverage; reforming tort laws to potentially save billions each year in wasteful spending; and changing costly state regulations to allow people to buy insurance across state lines. Rather than another top-down government plan, let's give Americans control over their own health care.

Democrats have never seriously considered such ideas, instead rushing through their own controversial proposals. After all, they don't need Republicans to sign on: Democrats control the House, the Senate and the presidency. But if passed, the Democrats' proposals will significantly alter a large sector of our economy. They will not improve our health care. They will not save us money. And, despite what the president says, they will not "provide more stability and security to every American."

We often hear such overblown promises from Washington. With first principles in mind and with the facts in hand, tell them that this time we're not buying it.

With the President reportedly prepared to lay out his non-negotiables on health care reform, the Republicans should enumerate non-negotiable positions of their ownand make it clear that everything else can be discussed and finessed. The key red-lines for conservatives should include:

1) First, and most importantly, health care reform must add nothing not one penny to the already crushing and disastrous federal deficit. With more than nine-trillion dollars in additional debt already projected over the next ten years, responsible public servants should concentrate all their efforts on ways to save money and to cut the budget. They must not under any circumstances enact reforms that would cost money and bloat the budget.

2) The GOP should reject any legislation that doesnt include malpractice insurance reform. No other change under discussion could lower medical costs as certainly and substantially as reducing the threat of junk lawsuits and thereby bringing down the devastating cost of malpractice insurance and defensive medicine. Everyone involved in the health care system is expected to sacrifice and cooperate in some way for the sake of reform: doctors, hospitals, insurance companies, even the American taxpayer. Trial lawyers shouldnt be the only participants in the medical industry exempted from these readjustments, especially when their addiction to jackpot justice and big contingency fees cripples health care providers by requiring unnecessary procedures (at tremendous and needless cost) and making malpractice insurance premiums a major expense for all medical professionals.

3) The Obama reforms must make no attempt to pay for their costs by cutting the funding of Medicare; in fact, any discussion of Medicare and its problems should be kept entirely separate from the general topic of health insurance reform. Not only would reduced Medicare funding lead inevitably to reduced availability of care for seniors, but it would kill the chance of saving Medicare later. Even if the President succeeds in shaving billions from the Medicare budget without weakening the protection of seniors (an unlikely eventuality), any effort to realize those savings now and use them to pay for Obamacare will make saving Medicare an even more nightmarish process in the future. The system is supposed to go bankrupt in 2017-18. Any available savings must be used to save that system, on which nearly all seniors rely. Those funds should not be reassigned to Obamacare, leaving Medicare with even less chance of ever putting its fiscal house in order.

4) The Obama health reforms must provide no federal funding for abortions or for the purchase of health insurance for illegal immigrants. The President says he agrees with these propositions, and repeatedly denies that he wants funding for either abortion or illegals. It should therefore be easy for him to bridge gaps, join hands, sing kum-ba-ya and so forth, regarding two of the true hot button issues in this debate, especially since conservatives fear Mr. Obama will go back on his word unless hes specific and clear on these explosive controversies. Republicans should challenge the President to make the kind of clear-cut commitment that leaves no wiggle room for equivocation or reconsideration.

The essential non-negotiables listed above represent more than a political ploy or a legislative tactic: they mostly reflect sentiments the President himself has expressed. If Obama is serious about bi-partisanship, let him embrace these reasonable demands. The chances are overwhelming that hell refuse to do so (particularly regarding malpractice reform) because he doesnt want to hand Republicans a political victory while attempting to seize one for himself. In any event, if the GOP approaches the Presidents speech in a constructive and clearly-articulated manner there will be less chance that Obama can credibly blame them for the failure of health care reform if it fails, and less chance that he can claim exclusive credit for health care reform if it passes. A Republican position that makes clear general support for the idea of reform, and specific requirements for the changes they will support, will put the President in a dilemma: either he incorporates GOP ideas and thereby shares some of the praise for passage, or rejects those notions and takes some of the blame for failure, or else simply ignores the conservative position (the most likely outcome) and blows away all pretense that he represents a bipartisan, unifying figure in our politics.

Above all, Republicans should stress the need to take time with the process of reform: if President Obama really wants to bring the country together, he cant insist on ramming health insurance reform through a partisan Democratic Congress without negotiation, discussion, perspective, or delay. If he wants to negotiate, whats the all-fired hurry? The only possible justification for his artificial sense of urgency is a fear that the American people will wake up to the consequences of his proposals (many already have) and rise in opposition. For changes that will impact this Republic forever, why shouldnt our elected representatives take a few extra months to consider the long-term impact of their decisions?

On Wednesday night, the President will ask the American people to come together and calm down. The Republicans should insist that the only way to calm down is to slow down authorizing more, not less discussion of legislation that will shape the future of every American.

B) No mandates--if someone wants catastrophic coverage only, they should be able to get it. In fact, it should be the starting point for all policies with a menu of items that increase costs available.

C) End "insurance pools"--which means health insurance becomes like auto insurance, the "pool" is NOT an employer, or a union, or some other cobbled together "group"; the risk pool reflects reality, which is that every individual holding a policy with a particular insurance company is in one huge pool.

3. Portability--disengaging insurance from employment (which doesn't mean a company CAN'T pay for it, it's just that the individual policy belongs to the individual). See "2-C" above.

5. Creation of a separate, supplemental insurance for pre-existing conditions. This could be like a "re-insurer" that insurance companies, individuals, and, yes, even the government, kicks money into to cover costly pre-existing conditions. This is a supplement to regular insurance covering everything but the pre-exisiting condition. (By the way, your dad's heart condition, or your mother's breast cancer is not YOUR pre-existing condition!)

Other than the possibility of the government kicking in to the "pre-existing condition pool", this requires no government (tax payer) money. It would address the issues that are most important to most Americans (the top priority being lowering the cost of coverage). Other results will be lowering the cost of care as new medical care businesses spring up to cover the needs of people with catastrophic coverage who are willing to pay out of pocket for check-ups, blood tests, minor maladies, etc.

Reduces expenditures, increases freedom, stimulates economy--all with no push for euthanasia or abortion either.

1. It isn't "health care," it is medical care, which is a combination of goods, services, the use of medical facilities, and the results of research and development. Thus, medical care cannot be a "right."

2. To say that everyone agrees that "the current system is broken," is a lie. Polls reveal that about 88% of the people are satisfied with their current medical insurance, so the system is not "broken."

3. Companies that do not make a profit, and that includes insurance companies, hospitals, and yes, Doctors, fail and go out of business. Making a profit is not a "bad thing."

Do the opposite of what Obama wants to do. Make INDIVIDUALS more responsibile for their healthcare. Encourage anyone who buys insurance to purchase catastrophic coverage instead. This way they will have to pay for their routine care which will cause them to use it more judiciously. By bringing down the demand, the costs will go down. The thousands they save on premiums could be used toward the higher deductible should something major happen. Also, tort reform will lower costs and premiums as well. Personally I think one of the worst things to happen in health insurance were co-pays. People have come to expect to only have to pay $20 to see a doctor. They pay that much to have their oil changed.

Michael you've hit on some major questions the Republicans should ask after the President's Speech but I would also add these:

1. If we are in such a rush to pass Healthcare Reform and add 47 million supposedly uninsured, then why is there no provision to train and educate more doctors, nurses and other medical professionals to handle the increase in demand? Unless we do this through some form of tax deductible donations to Medical Scholarship Funds we will have to pay for it with Tax Dollars which will increse the Federal Deficit even more. If we don't then rationing will occur by default since we can barely serve the current demand.

2. Since we don't have the money to pay for it why don't we use the income from the sale of public assets such as oil and gas royalties from ANWR, Offshore and other Public Lands to bring in new revenue, create millions of new jobs and reduce our dependence on foreign oil? This revenue would generate Billions of dollars without having to increase taxes so why aren't we in the same rush to do this as we are to pass Healthcare Reform that we have no way to pay for?

3. If one of the real goals is to make Private Sector Insurance Companies more competitive they why not simply allow for "groups" previously not considered to be "groups", such as Plumbers, Farmers, Mechanics etc. to become "groups" and negotiate for "group" rates? This along with tearing down the protective barriers between State lines would automatically create more competition without the need for "artificial competition" from some so called "public option" which will eventually become the only option since no company can compete against a government subsidized plan if the Liberals want to run the private sector out of business and wind up with a single payer, government run plan.

Commentary on Obama’s Speech

Obama’s health care speech can be found below:

As a whole, I thought that President Obama’s speech was very good, very persuasive, and if I believed that Obama-care was all that Obama proclaims it to be, I would be in favor of it myself. However, I don’t need any more education about what sort of a plan Obama would like to snap his fingers and see; I want to see the actual plan, and when he claims this or that, I want him to go to chapter and verse in the bill and show me where it says that.

What Obama faced coming into office was the greatest recession since President Carter left office. However, Obama is followed the FDR (and Hoover) models, which exacerbated the depression.

There are two things a majority of the people would like to see the government do: reduce the deficit and worry about the loss of jobs. Bear in mind that one of the great problems identified by Obama—loss of health care insurance when one loses their job—with be solved if there were more jobs. If Obama forgot about health care for a few months and concentrated on these things, the American people would be much more supportive of him.

Obama’s speech was filled with campaign-style rhetoric, like, I am not the first President to take up this cause, but I am determined to be the last.

As is often done with legislation selling, Obama lays out some of the problems:

1) Some people are only a medical crisis away rom bankruptcy. This time he drives home the point that this is middle America, as this is the support that he is losing.

2) 30 million Americans are without health care insurance at this time (remember, it used to be 47 million, but, somehow, without government doing anything, we trimmed this number down significantly).

3) People are losing their jobs, which often means a loss of medical insurance. Of course, if Obama concentrated on fixing the economy, this would no longer be a problem.

4) Health insurance costs are going up dramatically. Part of the problem here is, when hospitals are forced to pay for emergency care for people who don’t pay, and to take reduced payments for Medicare and Medicaid, and with malpractice insurance skyrocketing, this is to be expected.

5) Our deficit problem is, in part because of Medicare and Medicaid. Well, duh! These are big government programs, and big government programs always promise too much, deliver to little, and do it at a much higher cost than originally anticipated.

Then, just as Al Gore has done with global warming, Obama has declared that the time for debate is over (the time for bickering is over). Don’t you like that? We are at a point where there are more people who oppose Obama-care than support it, so now the debate is over.

Then Obama announces his goals, and, at times, speaks as if there is a health care bill (there is one complete health care bill in the house) and at other times, indicates that he is still working on it.

So, let me get this straight—we don’t really have a bill yet, but the time for bickering about I is over...do I understand that right? And here, silly me, I thought that when a bill was not yet completed, that would be an excellent time for debate.

Then, just as if Obama has all of the answers, he says, “Now here are the details of the bill...” and follows this with a series of goals, decidedly lacking in details, which may or may not be achievable.

Obama continues to repeat, probably for the 9,474^th time, that his health care bill (which does not exists, remember) will not require you to change your healthcare insurance if you life it. For the House bill, this is technically true. Nowhere in this bill is there a provision which states, Charlie Brown must change his healthcare insurance. However, if your company decides to pay the fine instead of carry health insurance, then you will have to go and buy insurance on the open market, and without the company kicking in what is often half the amount. For this person, their health are coverage could possibly double in cost overnight. There are other provisions of the House bill which indicate that, if you change jobs or have any other kind of a change in your health, you will probably have to get different health care coverage. The impression Obama is trying to give is, your health care coverage will not change if that is your preference. He will not say it that way because it would be an outright lie. So he says the bill will not require you to change your present coverage, which is, more or less, true.

Tax credits are said to be a part of this bill. I do not recall whether tax credits are a part of the House bill, but a very simple bill would simply give everyone a $2000 tax credit toward health insurance—a use it or lose it proposition—and that would be enough to purchase disaster coverage, and the bill would be about 1 page long, involve no government option, and the responsibility for having health care insurance would be placed on the individual. However, that is not what he I going to do; tax credits will be given to only certain people. That is because this bill is going to be more about redistributing wealth than it will be about health care (remember the stimulus bill? That was not really about stimulating the economy; it was about paying back special interests ith government money).

One of the high points of Obama’s speech was when he admitted that there were some significant details to iron out...and the audience spontaneously laughs. Consider, Obama is promising to provide universal health care coverage, without increasing the deficit, where your premiums will be lower; and, if you cannot afford that, the government will subsidize you on top of that. And all without providing one single clear cost-cutting measure. Hell, yes; sign me up for that! If it could be done, I’d vote for that.

President Obama is a very persuasive man, and when he says these things, a lot of people just believe him. However, a little over half of us do not. I am not impugning his motives here; I am just smart enough to realize that he cannot deliver when he promises the impossible.

As for the lies and distortions which Obama exposes, they are not lies and distortions; and we have covered them in the past, so not need to again

Madam Speaker, Vice President Biden, members of Congress, and the American people:

When I spoke here last winter, this nation was facing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. We were losing an average of 700,000 jobs per month. Credit was frozen. And our financial system was on the verge of collapse.

As any American who is still looking for work or a way to pay their bills will tell you, we are by no means out of the woods. A full and vibrant recovery is still many months away. And I will not let up until those Americans who seek jobs can find them -- (applause) -- until those businesses that seek capital and credit can thrive; until all responsible homeowners can stay in their homes. That is our ultimate goal. But thanks to the bold and decisive action we've taken since January, I can stand here with confidence and say that we have pulled this economy back from the brink. (Applause.)

I want to thank the members of this body for your efforts and your support in these last several months, and especially those who've taken the difficult votes that have put us on a path to recovery. I also want to thank the American people for their patience and resolve during this trying time for our nation.

But we did not come here just to clean up crises. We came here to build a future. (Applause.) So tonight, I return to speak to all of you about an issue that is central to that future -- and that is the issue of health care.

I am not the first President to take up this cause, but I am determined to be the last. (Applause.) It has now been nearly a century since Theodore Roosevelt first called for health care reform. And ever since, nearly every President and Congress, whether Democrat or Republican, has attempted to meet this challenge in some way. A bill for comprehensive health reform was first introduced by John Dingell Sr. in 1943. Sixty-five years later, his son continues to introduce that same bill at the beginning of each session. (Applause.)

Our collective failure to meet this challenge -- year after year, decade after decade -- has led us to the breaking point. Everyone understands the extraordinary hardships that are placed on the uninsured, who live every day just one accident or illness away from bankruptcy. These are not primarily people on welfare. These are middle-class Americans. Some can't get insurance on the job. Others are self-employed, and can't afford it, since buying insurance on your own costs you three times as much as the coverage you get from your employer. Many other Americans who are willing and able to pay are still denied insurance due to previous illnesses or conditions that insurance companies decide are too risky or too expensive to cover.

We are the only democracy -- the only advanced democracy on Earth -- the only wealthy nation -- that allows such hardship for millions of its people. There are now more than 30 million American citizens who cannot get coverage. In just a two-year period, one in every three Americans goes without health care coverage at some point. And every day, 14,000 Americans lose their coverage. In other words, it can happen to anyone.

But the problem that plagues the health care system is not just a problem for the uninsured. Those who do have insurance have never had less security and stability than they do today. More and more Americans worry that if you move, lose your job, or change your job, you'll lose your

health insurance too. More and more Americans pay their premiums, only to discover that their insurance company has dropped their coverage when they get sick, or won't pay the full cost of care. It happens every day.

One man from Illinois lost his coverage in the middle of chemotherapy because his insurer found that he hadn't reported gallstones that he didn't even know about. They delayed his treatment, and he died because of it. Another woman from Texas was about to get a double mastectomy when her insurance company canceled her policy because she forgot to declare a case of acne. By the time she had her insurance reinstated, her breast cancer had more than doubled in size. That is heart-breaking, it is wrong, and no one should be treated that way in the United States of America. (Applause.)

Then there's the problem of rising cost. We spend one and a half times more per person on health care than any other country, but we aren't any healthier for it. This is one of the reasons that insurance premiums have gone up three times faster than wages. It's why so many employers -- especially small businesses -- are forcing their employees to pay more for insurance, or are dropping their coverage entirely. It's why so many aspiring entrepreneurs cannot afford to open a business in the first place, and why American businesses that compete internationally -- like our automakers -- are at a huge disadvantage. And it's why those of us with health insurance are also paying a hidden and growing tax for those without it -- about $1,000 per year that pays for somebody else's emergency room and charitable care.

Finally, our health care system is placing an unsustainable burden on taxpayers. When health care costs grow at the rate they have, it puts greater pressure on programs like Medicare and Medicaid. If we do nothing to slow these skyrocketing costs, we will eventually be spending more on Medicare and Medicaid than every other government program combined. Put simply, our health care problem is our deficit problem. Nothing else even comes close. Nothing else. (Applause.)

Now, these are the facts. Nobody disputes them. We know we must reform this system. The question is how.

There are those on the left who believe that the only way to fix the system is through a single-payer system like Canada's -- (applause) -- where we would severely restrict the private insurance market and have the government provide coverage for everybody. On the right, there are those who argue that we should end employer-based systems and leave individuals to buy health insurance on their own.

I've said -- I have to say that there are arguments to be made for both these approaches. But either one would represent a radical shift that would disrupt the health care most people currently have. Since health care represents one-sixth of our economy, I believe it makes more sense to build on what works and fix what doesn't, rather than try to build an entirely new system from scratch. (Applause.) And that is precisely what those of you in Congress have tried to do over the past several months.

We've seen many in this chamber work tirelessly for the better part of this year to offer thoughtful ideas about how to achieve reform. Of the five committees asked to develop bills, four have completed their work, and the Senate Finance Committee announced today that it will move forward next week. That has never happened before. Our overall efforts have been supported by an unprecedented coalition of doctors and nurses; hospitals, seniors' groups, and even drug companies -- many of whom opposed reform in the past. And there is agreement in this chamber on about 80 percent of what needs to be done, putting us closer to the goal of reform than we have ever been.

But what we've also seen in these last months is the same partisan spectacle that only hardens the disdain many Americans have towards their own government. Instead of honest debate, we've seen scare tactics. Some have dug into unyielding ideological camps that offer no hope of compromise. Too many have used this as an opportunity to score short-term political points, even if it robs the country of our opportunity to solve a long-term challenge. And out of this blizzard of charges and counter-charges, confusion has reigned.

Well, the time for bickering is over. The time for games has passed. (Applause.) Now is the season for action. Now is when we must bring the best ideas of both parties together, and show the American people that we can still do what we were sent here to do. Now is the time to deliver on health care. Now is the time to deliver on health care.

The plan I'm announcing tonight would meet three basic goals. It will provide more security and stability to those who have health insurance. It will provide insurance for those who don't. And it will slow the growth of health care costs for our families, our businesses, and our government. (Applause.) It's a plan that asks everyone to take responsibility for meeting this challenge -- not just government, not just insurance companies, but everybody including employers and individuals. And it's a plan that incorporates ideas from senators and congressmen, from Democrats and Republicans -- and yes, from some of my opponents in both the primary and general election.

Here are the details that every American needs to know about this plan. First, if you are among the hundreds of millions of Americans who already have health insurance through your job, or Medicare, or Medicaid, or the VA, nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have. (Applause.) Let me repeat this: Nothing in our plan requires you to change what you have.

What this plan will do is make the insurance you have work better for you. Under this plan, it will be against the law for insurance companies to deny you coverage because of a preexisting condition. (Applause.) As soon as I sign this bill, it will be against the law for insurance companies to drop your coverage when you get sick or water it down when you need it the most. (Applause.) They will no longer be able to place some arbitrary cap on the amount of coverage you can receive in a given year or in a lifetime. (Applause.) We will place a limit on how much you can be charged for out-of-pocket expenses, because in the United States of America, no one should go broke because they get sick. (Applause.) And insurance companies will be required to cover, with no extra charge, routine checkups and preventive care, like mammograms and colonoscopies -- (applause) -- because there's no reason we shouldn't be catching diseases like breast cancer and colon cancer before they get worse. That makes sense, it saves money, and it saves lives. (Applause.)

Now, that's what Americans who have health insurance can expect from this plan -- more security and more stability.

Now, if you're one of the tens of millions of Americans who don't currently have health insurance, the second part of this plan will finally offer you quality, affordable choices. (Applause.) If you lose your job or you change your job, you'll be able to get coverage. If you strike out on your own and start a small business, you'll be able to get coverage. We'll do this by creating a new insurance exchange -- a marketplace where individuals and small businesses will be able to shop for health insurance at competitive prices. Insurance companies will have an incentive to participate in this exchange because it lets them compete for millions of new customers. As one big group, these customers will have greater leverage to bargain with the insurance companies for better prices and quality coverage. This is how large companies and government employees get affordable insurance. It's how everyone in this Congress gets affordable insurance. And it's time to give every American the same opportunity that we give ourselves. (Applause.)

Now, for those individuals and small businesses who still can't afford the lower-priced insurance available in the exchange, we'll provide tax credits, the size of which will be based on your need. And all insurance companies that want access to this new marketplace will have to abide by the consumer protections I already mentioned. This exchange will take effect in four years, which will give us time to do it right. In the meantime, for those Americans who can't get insurance today because they have preexisting medical conditions, we will immediately offer low-cost coverage that will protect you against financial ruin if you become seriously ill. (Applause.) This was a good idea when Senator John McCain proposed it in the campaign, it's a good idea now, and we should all embrace it. (Applause.)

Now, even if we provide these affordable options, there may be those -- especially the young and the healthy -- who still want to take the risk and go without coverage. There may still be companies that refuse to do right by their workers by giving them coverage. The problem is, such irresponsible behavior costs all the rest of us money. If there are affordable options and people still don't sign up for health insurance, it means we pay for these people's expensive emergency room visits. If some businesses don't provide workers health care, it forces the rest of us to pick up the tab when their workers get sick, and gives those businesses an unfair advantage over their competitors. And unless everybody does their part, many of the insurance reforms we seek -- especially requiring insurance companies to cover preexisting conditions -- just can't be achieved.

And that's why under my plan, individuals will be required to carry basic health insurance -- just as most states require you to carry auto insurance. (Applause.) Likewise -- likewise, businesses will be required to either offer their workers health care, or chip in to help cover the cost of their workers. There will be a hardship waiver for those individuals who still can't afford coverage, and 95 percent of all small businesses, because of their size and narrow profit margin, would be exempt from these requirements. (Applause.) But we can't have large businesses and individuals who can afford coverage game the system by avoiding responsibility to themselves or their employees. Improving our health care system only works if everybody does their part.

And while there remain some significant details to be ironed out, I believe -- (laughter) -- I believe a broad consensus exists for the aspects of the plan I just outlined: consumer protections for those with insurance, an exchange that allows individuals and small businesses to purchase affordable coverage, and a requirement that people who can afford insurance get insurance.

And I have no doubt that these reforms would greatly benefit Americans from all walks of life, as well as the economy as a whole. Still, given all the misinformation that's been spread over the past few months, I realize -- (applause) -- I realize that many Americans have grown nervous about reform. So tonight I want to address some of the key controversies that are still out there.

Some of people's concerns have grown out of bogus claims spread by those whose only agenda is to kill reform at any cost. The best example is the claim made not just by radio and cable talk show hosts, but by prominent politicians, that we plan to set up panels of bureaucrats with the power to kill off senior citizens. Now, such a charge would be laughable if it weren't so cynical and irresponsible. It is a lie, plain and simple. (Applause.)

There are also those who claim that our reform efforts would insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false. The reforms -- the reforms I'm proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.

THE PRESIDENT: It's not true. And one more misunderstanding I want to clear up -- under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions, and federal conscience laws will remain in place. (Applause.)

Now, my health care proposal has also been attacked by some who oppose reform as a "government takeover" of the entire health care system. As proof, critics point to a provision in our plan that allows the uninsured and small businesses to choose a publicly sponsored insurance option, administered by the government just like Medicaid or Medicare. (Applause.)

So let me set the record straight here. My guiding principle is, and always has been, that consumers do better when there is choice and competition. That's how the market works. (Applause.) Unfortunately, in 34 states, 75 percent of the insurance market is controlled by five or fewer companies. In Alabama, almost 90 percent is controlled by just one company. And without competition, the price of insurance goes up and quality goes down. And it makes it easier for insurance companies to treat their customers badly -- by cherry-picking the healthiest individuals and trying to drop the sickest, by overcharging small businesses who have no leverage, and by jacking up rates.

Insurance executives don't do this because they're bad people; they do it because it's profitable. As one former insurance executive testified before Congress, insurance companies are not only encouraged to find reasons to drop the seriously ill, they are rewarded for it. All of this is in service of meeting what this former executive called "Wall Street's relentless profit expectations."

Now, I have no interest in putting insurance companies out of business. They provide a legitimate service, and employ a lot of our friends and neighbors. I just want to hold them accountable. (Applause.) And the insurance reforms that I've already mentioned would do just that. But an additional step we can take to keep insurance companies honest is by making a not-for-profit public option available in the insurance exchange. (Applause.) Now, let me be clear. Let me be clear. It would only be an option for those who don't have insurance. No one would be forced to choose it, and it would not impact those of you who already have insurance. In fact, based on Congressional Budget Office estimates, we believe that less than 5 percent of Americans would sign up.

Despite all this, the insurance companies and their allies don't like this idea. They argue that these private companies can't fairly compete with the government. And they'd be right if taxpayers were subsidizing this public insurance option. But they won't be. I've insisted that like any private insurance company, the public insurance option would have to be self-sufficient and rely on the premiums it collects. But by avoiding some of the overhead that gets eaten up at private companies by profits and excessive administrative costs and executive salaries, it could provide a good deal for consumers, and would also keep pressure on private insurers to keep their policies affordable and treat their customers better, the same way public colleges and universities provide additional choice and competition to students without in any way inhibiting a vibrant system of private colleges and universities. (Applause.)

Now, it is -- it's worth noting that a strong majority of Americans still favor a public insurance option of the sort I've proposed tonight. But its impact shouldn't be exaggerated -- by the left or the right or the media. It is only one part of my plan, and shouldn't be used as a handy excuse for the usual Washington ideological battles. To my progressive friends, I would remind you that for decades, the driving idea behind reform has been to end insurance company abuses and make coverage available for those without it. (Applause.) The public option -- the public option is only a means to that end -- and we should remain open to other ideas that accomplish our ultimate goal. And to my Republican friends, I say that rather than making wild claims about a government takeover of health care, we should work together to address any legitimate concerns you may have. (Applause.)

For example -- for example, some have suggested that the public option go into effect only in those markets where insurance companies are not providing affordable policies. Others have proposed a co-op or another non-profit entity to administer the plan. These are all constructive ideas worth exploring. But I will not back down on the basic principle that if Americans can't find affordable coverage, we will provide you with a choice. (Applause.) And I will make sure that no government bureaucrat or insurance company bureaucrat gets between you and the care that you need. (Applause.)

Finally, let me discuss an issue that is a great concern to me, to members of this chamber, and to the public -- and that's how we pay for this plan.

And here's what you need to know. First, I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits -- either now or in the future. (Applause.) I will not sign it if it adds one dime to the deficit, now or in the future, period. And to prove that I'm serious, there will be a provision in this plan that requires us to come forward with more spending cuts if the savings we promised don't materialize. (Applause.) Now, part of the reason I faced a trillion-dollar deficit when I walked in the door of the White House is because too many initiatives over the last decade were not paid for -- from the Iraq war to tax breaks for the wealthy. (Applause.) I will not make that same mistake with health care.

Second, we've estimated that most of this plan can be paid for by finding savings within the existing health care system, a system that is currently full of waste and abuse. Right now, too much of the hard-earned savings and tax dollars we spend on health care don't make us any healthier. That's not my judgment -- it's the judgment of medical professionals across this country. And this is also true when it comes to Medicare and Medicaid.

In fact, I want to speak directly to seniors for a moment, because Medicare is another issue that's been subjected to demagoguery and distortion during the course of this debate.

More than four decades ago, this nation stood up for the principle that after a lifetime of hard work, our seniors should not be left to struggle with a pile of medical bills in their later years. That's how Medicare was born. And it remains a sacred trust that must be passed down from one generation to the next. (Applause.) And that is why not a dollar of the Medicare trust fund will be used to pay for this plan. (Applause.)

The only thing this plan would eliminate is the hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and fraud, as well as unwarranted subsidies in Medicare that go to insurance companies -- subsidies that do everything to pad their profits but don't improve the care of seniors. And we will also create an independent commission of doctors and medical experts charged with identifying more waste in the years ahead. (Applause.)

Now, these steps will ensure that you -- America's seniors -- get the benefits you've been promised. They will ensure that Medicare is there for future generations. And we can use some of the savings to fill the gap in coverage that forces too many seniors to pay thousands of dollars a year out of their own pockets for prescription drugs. (Applause.) That's what this plan will do for you. So don't pay attention to those scary stories about how your benefits will be cut, especially since some of the same folks who are spreading these tall tales have fought against Medicare in the past and just this year supported a budget that would essentially have turned Medicare into a privatized voucher program. That will not happen on my watch. I will protect Medicare. (Applause.)

Now, because Medicare is such a big part of the health care system, making the program more efficient can help usher in changes in the way we deliver health care that can reduce costs for everybody. We have long known that some places -- like the Intermountain Healthcare in Utah or the Geisinger Health System in rural Pennsylvania -- offer high-quality care at costs below average. So the commission can help encourage the adoption of these common-sense best practices by doctors and medical professionals throughout the system -- everything from reducing hospital infection rates to encouraging better coordination between teams of doctors.

Reducing the waste and inefficiency in Medicare and Medicaid will pay for most of this plan. (Applause.) Now, much of the rest would be paid for with revenues from the very same drug and insurance companies that stand to benefit from tens of millions of new customers. And this reform will charge insurance companies a fee for their most expensive policies, which will encourage them to provide greater value for the money -- an idea which has the support of Democratic and Republican experts. And according to these same experts, this modest change could help hold down the cost of health care for all of us in the long run.

Now, finally, many in this chamber -- particularly on the Republican side of the aisle -- have long insisted that reforming our medical malpractice laws can help bring down the cost of health care. (Applause.) Now -- there you go. There you go. Now, I don't believe malpractice reform is a silver bullet, but I've talked to enough doctors to know that defensive medicine may be contributing to unnecessary costs. (Applause.) So I'm proposing that we move forward on a range of ideas about how to put patient safety first and let doctors focus on practicing medicine. (Applause.) I know that the Bush administration considered authorizing demonstration projects in individual states to test these ideas. I think it's a good idea, and I'm directing my Secretary of Health and Human Services to move forward on this initiative today. (Applause.)

Now, add it all up, and the plan I'm proposing will cost around $900 billion over 10 years -- less than we have spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and less than the tax cuts for the wealthiest few Americans that Congress passed at the beginning of the previous administration. (Applause.) Now, most of these costs will be paid for with money already being spent -- but spent badly -- in the existing health care system. The plan will not add to our deficit. The middle class will realize greater security, not higher taxes. And if we are able to slow the growth of health care costs by just one-tenth of 1 percent each year -- one-tenth of 1 percent -- it will actually reduce the deficit by $4 trillion over the long term.

Now, this is the plan I'm proposing. It's a plan that incorporates ideas from many of the people in this room tonight -- Democrats and Republicans. And I will continue to seek common ground in the weeks ahead. If you come to me with a serious set of proposals, I will be there to listen. My door is always open.

But know this: I will not waste time with those who have made the calculation that it's better politics to kill this plan than to improve it. (Applause.) I won't stand by while the special interests use the same old tactics to keep things exactly the way they are. If you misrepresent what's in this plan, we will call you out. (Applause.) And I will not -- and I will not accept the status quo as a solution. Not this time. Not now.

Finally, let me discuss an issue that is a great concern to me, to members of this chamber, and to the public -- and that's how we pay for this plan.

In fact, I want to speak directly to seniors for a moment, because Medicare is another issue that's been subjected to demagoguery and distortion during the course of this debate.

Everyone in this room knows what will happen if we do nothing. Our deficit will grow. More families will go bankrupt. More businesses will close. More Americans will lose their coverage when they are sick and need it the most. And more will die as a result. We know these things to be true.

That is why we cannot fail. Because there are too many Americans counting on us to succeed -- the ones who suffer silently, and the ones who shared their stories with us at town halls, in e-mails, and in letters.

I received one of those letters a few days ago. It was from our beloved friend and colleague, Ted Kennedy. He had written it back in May, shortly after he was told that his illness was terminal. He asked that it be delivered upon his death.

In it, he spoke about what a happy time his last months were, thanks to the love and support of family and friends, his wife, Vicki, his amazing children, who are all here tonight. And he expressed confidence that this would be the year that health care reform -- "that great unfinished business of our society," he called it -- would finally pass. He repeated the truth that health care is decisive for our future prosperity, but he also reminded me that "it concerns more than material things." "What we face," he wrote, "is above all a moral issue; at stake are not just the details of policy, but fundamental principles of social justice and the character of our country."

I've thought about that phrase quite a bit in recent days -- the character of our country. One of the unique and wonderful things about America has always been our self-reliance, our rugged individualism, our fierce defense of freedom and our healthy skepticism of government. And figuring out the appropriate size and role of government has always been a source of rigorous and, yes, sometimes angry debate. That's our history.

For some of Ted Kennedy's critics, his brand of liberalism represented an affront to American liberty. In their minds, his passion for universal health care was nothing more than a passion for big government.

But those of us who knew Teddy and worked with him here -- people of both parties -- know that what drove him was something more. His friend Orrin Hatch -- he knows that. They worked together to provide children with health insurance. His friend John McCain knows that. They worked together on a Patient's Bill of Rights. His friend Chuck Grassley knows that. They worked together to provide health care to children with disabilities.

On issues like these, Ted Kennedy's passion was born not of some rigid ideology, but of his own experience. It was the experience of having two children stricken with cancer. He never forgot the sheer terror and helplessness that any parent feels when a child is badly sick. And he was able to imagine what it must be like for those without insurance, what it would be like to have to say to a wife or a child or an aging parent, there is something that could make you better, but I just can't afford it.

That large-heartedness -- that concern and regard for the plight of others -- is not a partisan feeling. It's not a Republican or a Democratic feeling. It, too, is part of the American character -- our ability to stand in other people's shoes; a recognition that we are all in this together, and when fortune turns against one of us, others are there to lend a helping hand; a belief that in this country, hard work and responsibility should be rewarded by some measure of security and fair play; and an acknowledgment that sometimes government has to step in to help deliver on that promise.

This has always been the history of our progress. In 1935, when over half of our seniors could not support themselves and millions had seen their savings wiped away, there were those who argued that Social Security would lead to socialism, but the men and women of Congress stood fast, and we are all the better for it. In 1965, when some argued that Medicare represented a government takeover of health care, members of Congress -- Democrats and Republicans -- did not back down. They joined together so that all of us could enter our golden years with some basic peace of mind.

You see, our predecessors understood that government could not, and should not, solve every problem. They understood that there are instances when the gains in security from government action are not worth the added constraints on our freedom. But they also understood that the danger of too much government is matched by the perils of too little; that without the leavening hand of wise policy, markets can crash, monopolies can stifle competition, the vulnerable can be exploited. And they knew that when any government measure, no matter how carefully crafted or beneficial, is subject to scorn; when any efforts to help people in need are attacked as un-American; when facts and reason are thrown overboard and only timidity passes for wisdom, and we can no longer even engage in a civil conversation with each other over the things that truly matter -- that at that point we don't merely lose our capacity to solve big challenges. We lose something essential about ourselves.

That was true then. It remains true today. I understand how difficult this health care debate has been. I know that many in this country are deeply skeptical that government is looking out for them. I understand that the politically safe move would be to kick the can further down the road -- to defer reform one more year, or one more election, or one more term.

But that is not what the moment calls for. That's not what we came here to do. We did not come to fear the future. We came here to shape it. I still believe we can act even when it's hard. (Applause.) I still believe -- I still believe that we can act when it's hard. I still believe we can replace acrimony with civility, and gridlock with progress. I still believe we can do great things, and that here and now we will meet history's test.

Because that's who we are. That is our calling. That is our character. Thank you, God bless you, and may God bless the United States of America. (Applause.)

Under this plan, it will be against the law for insurance companies to deny you coverage because of a pre-existing condition.

Translation: I, Barack Obama, ignoring thousands of years of failed price-control schemes, will impose price controls on health insurance. I will force insurers to sell a $50k policies for $10k. What could go wrong?

True. And your employer mandate would kill hundreds of thousands of low-wage jobs that would never come back.

They will no longer be able to place some arbitrary cap on the amount of coverage you can receive in a given year or a lifetime. We will place a limit on how much you can be charged for out-of-pocket expenses.. And insurance companies will be required to cover, with no extra charge, routine checkups and preventive care.

I will make sure that no government bureaucrat or insurance company bureaucrat gets between you and the care that you need.

Some. supported a budget that would have essentially turned Medicare into a privatized voucher program. That will never happen on my watch. I will protect Medicare.

Translation: I will never let seniors control their own health care dollars. I will never give up Washington's control over your health care decisions. Mmmmuuuuhahahahahaha!

Translation: There are too many lobbyists counting on me to succeed: drug-industry lobbyists, health-insurance lobbyists, physician-cartel lobbyists, large-employer lobbyists, hospital lobbyists..

It's a plan that asks everyone to take responsibility for meeting this challenge - not just government and insurance companies, but employers and individuals.

Translation: I'm going to tax the hell out of you, but I don't want you to notice how much I'm going to tax you. So I'm going to tax employers and insurance companies, and they're going to pass the taxes on to you. Most of the taxes won't even show up in the government's budget. It's all very clever. No, seriously - just ask my economic advisor Larry Summers.

It's a plan that incorporates ideas from Senators and Congressmen; from Democrats and Republicans - and yes, from some of my opponents in both the primary and general election.

Translation: I may have savaged your ideas in the past, called them irresponsible. risky, dangerous, whatever. But that wasn't about principle; I just wanted to become president. Now that I'm president, I need a win. So you'll help me, won't you? Hey, where's Hillary?

Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) called for President Obama's "czars," to testify before Congress about their "authority and responsibilities" in the executive branch.

Diversity cuts both ways. The International studies building at the University of Wyoming is being named after Dick Cheney, and there are a number of protests. In fact, when I googled this article, I found tons and tons of same angry statements by protesters; but it took a lot of digging to find this article by Tom Buchanan, University President, who explains to these protesters (about 150 of whom signed a petition saying they did not want Dick Cheney’s name attached to a building) that diversity cuts both ways.

I don’t know how well you remember your Great Depression history, but one of the many things which exacerbated the depression was imposing tariffs on foreign goods (which, in turn, caused them to levy tariffs on our goods). Guess what Obama is doing?

RUSH: It was disgusting and it was reprehensible and it was predictable. Greetings, my friends, it's Rush Limbaugh, this the EIB Network and the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies. Great to have you here. Telephone number, 800-282-2882. And the e-mail address, ElRushbo@eibnet.com.

The office of the president of the United States was demeaned last night. President Barack Obama gave a grossly inappropriate and, to me, embarrassing speech, a campaign speech disguised as a big speech to a joint session of Congress. It was grossly inappropriate in content. There were lies, falsehoods, distortions, it was embarrassing in tone. He called his critics liars when his own positions have been proven to be untrue. It's just like this CNN poll. That speech last night was a fraud. It was dishonest. It demeaned the office of the presidency. Now, after the speech CNN and Opinion Research Corporation released a flash poll and said, wow, look at this: Two-thirds of the people who watched the speech have changed their mind. You want to hear who was sampled? Forty-five percent Democrat, 18% Republican. That is also fraud. Passing a poll with a sample like that off as a representative sample of the country is absolutely fraudulent, which is what the entire State-Controlled Media has become.

Last night was uncomfortable, especially how about if you're a parent and you had your children in school this week, the president's speech to the kids, just as I said, it was to set up last night's speech. We're being told and kids are being told to look up to this man. It was an awful speech. He was petulant; he was childish; he was a community organizer and agitator; he lied; he was divisive; he attacked me; he attacked Sarah Palin; he attacked conservative Republicans in Congress who dare to challenge government-run health care. He continued to attack tens of millions of Americans who spent the summer attending town hall meetings. It was crude. It was disgusting. The most crude and disgusting performance by any president I have seen.

You want a summary of the lies? He lied about only 5% of Americans being forced to the public option. Not true. He lied about the money he would drain from Medicare. Not true what he said. He lied about end-of-life decisions which comes down to rationing. He lied about coverage for illegal aliens, on and on and on, having attacked and lied throughout this thing. He then claims he wants to work with Republicans with whom he has not met since April. He claims to be nonpartisan, above the fray. Now, Joe Wilson, congressman, South Carolina, this is what happened at one point during the speech last night.

OBAMA: There are also those who claim that our reform efforts would insure illegal immigrants. This too is false. The reforms -- (crowd rumbling) the reforms I am proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.

RUSH: That's Joe Wilson, a congressman from South Carolina, a freshman. That was a blatant lie. I'm going to tell you something. One of the things that's really irritated me all morning and last night was listening to Republicans, even after Wilson has apologized, and I wish he had not, but he's apologized and even after he's apologized, members of his own party are all over television denigrating him, "It was bad decorum." Folks, can I tell you what is happening here? This speech last night and this administration is not your average presidential administration. This is not a garden party. This is not a lecture at Harvard or any other University. We are in the process, we are in the midst of an administration that is trying to totally tear down the institutions and traditions that have made this country great. He is lying, President Obama is, from the moment he opens his mouth until he ends the speech. I was shouting, "You're lying," throughout the speech at the television. You're lying! It's a lie! Joe Wilson simply articulated what millions of Americans were saying. This is a beanbag.

We're not talking about the Marquess of Queensberry rules here. This is not some debating society. You people in the Republican Party, I've heard you. You are accusing this administration and its allies and all the entire left of dismantling every institution that has defined this country's greatness. And if you now are going to attack one of your own, Joe Wilson, especially after he's apologized for simply joining the argument -- it's about time somebody said this to Obama! It's about time Biden got upset. It's about time Michelle Obama got upset. It's about time that Nancy Pelosi got upset. These people get a free rein. They can sit there and boo George Bush in 2005 all they want. You got Code Pink come in congressional and Senate hearings and disrupt, they can do their Abu Ghraib stuff, and they say they're great citizens, they are great heroes, these are great examples. Remember, dissent was the new definition of patriotism. "But, Rush, but, Rush, this was a total departure from parliamentary decorum and rules." Don't give me that with all those standing ovations last night, a 35-minute speech stretched out to almost one hour because of the standing O and the applauses and so forth.

Folks, we are in a serious struggle to save our country and Joe Wilson voiced what millions of Americans have been saying about this man, Barack Obama, for months. And if we're going to start censuring our own people on our team who are willing to try, then maybe we need new people in the game. I was ecstatic when I heard that last night. This is serious. This is not normal, everyday politics. One of the things I'm going to do here shortly, I've got the standard traditional analysis of the speech, but I'm going to translate this speech for you last night and I'm going to give it to you as if Obama is speaking to you, in addition to the standard line-by-line analysis. Last night he equated profits with overhead. I don't know if he's just stupid. Somebody wrote this speech. Somebody had to put that in the teleprompter. Somebody vetted the speech. Profits are equated with overhead? And somehow we've gotta reduce them. I know he hates profit, and I know he wants to use profit as a weapon against successful people. But profit is what's left after the overhead and the other expenses. He's either a blooming idiot or thinks that we are and knows that the State-Controlled Media is not going to call him out on this kind of thing.

There was another thing last night that I just had to laugh. He is going to cut $500 billion from Medicare but not from coverage. No, from fraud and waste. Well, if he's going to do that, why not do that now, why not do that six months ago, why not do it today? Why wait four years? But that's not even the most salient point about this. Stop and think of this. Barack Obama, the architect of waste, fraud, deficit spending, lying, everything you can think of, says that he is going to use the waste and fraud and abuse in government to pay for more government! The waste and fraud and abuse in government is going to be used to pay for more government. I was just stunned last night. Joe Wilson need not have apologized and members of his own party need not jump on him now, all this business about decorum. Folks, if we're serious about the things that we're charging, if we're serious about the things that we're accusing this administration of, then we cannot trash and destroy and discard one of our own. I mean finally somebody in the Republican Party spoke up. May not have been the best place, but, frankly, I don't have a problem at all with what he did because of the serious nature of what we face, the serious nature of what we're up against. But, for crying out loud, somebody finally comes along and tries to get in the game. You know a lot of people in that room last night know he's lying through his teeth and wanted to say it and Joe Wilson finally did. Let's listen to some audio sound bites of the State-Controlled Media and Obama flacks calling this kind of heckling unprecedented.

WILLIAMS: The president was heckled by at least one member of Congress. For a time it sounded much more like the British parliament than a joint session of Congress.

AXELROD: I have never seen it before in a presidential address and it was unfortunate.

GIBSON: I have never heard anybody in a presidential speech, be it a State of the Union, somebody yell out "lie" when the president says something in a speech.

RUSH: Well, there's a first time for everything, and it happened to be true, Charlie, it happened to be true. Here's Vice President Biden. This is on Good Morning America today and Diane Sawyer said, "We watched your face at that moment, you turned to Pelosi, what did you say to her?"

BIDEN: I was embarrassed. I was embarrassed for a chamber and a Congress I love. I served there for 36 years and I thought it demeaned the institution, and I thought it sent a signal to every young person out there that -- that was very, very damaging, but I know Joe, he apologized, I take him at his word that he got caught up in the emotion of the moment, but the fact is that the assertion the president made is absolutely true. It will not cover undocumented aliens.

RUSH: It's simply not true. It will cover undocumented aliens. Now, it may not specifically say so in the bill. But we have to know that what's coming is amnesty. They're going to be made legal. We're going to have all of this. If Obama gets his way we're going to legalize 12 to 20 million illegals, and they're going to become citizens and they're going to get coverage. And they're, at the end of the day, going to still be illegal regardless the law and amnesty and everything else. It's coming, there's no question, this is the point. This is precisely what Obama wants to accomplish. We got new job numbers today. We got new foreclosure numbers today. It's through the roof bad. The crisis that should be addressed by this president last night is the one of his making: nearly three million unemployed. He had the audacity to open up last night and tell people we're coming back from the brink. He had the audacity to lie about the state of the economy and his role in repairing it. He's in the process of destroying it, and on purpose. And this is what we know and finally a guy stood up last night and said "you lie." He ought to be a guidepost, Joe Wilson, for everybody else on our side in dealing with this. Let's go back to 2005. It's unprecedented, Charlie Gibson never heard anything like this; Brian Williams never heard anything like this. State of the Union address, first one of his second term, February 2, 2005.

BUSH: By the year 2042 the entire system would be exhausted and bankrupt. (crowd rumbling) If steps are not taken to avert that outcome, the only solutions would be dramatically higher taxes, massive new borrowing, or sudden and severe cuts in Social Security benefits or other government programs. (booing)

RUSH: Got booed in 2005, what about the decorum there, what about the precious protocol? And, of course, Bush was telling the truth here about Social Security where it was headed and his attempt to reform it. Same night, same speech, Ted Koppel reported after the speech, said this.

KOPPEL: When the president talked about the bankruptcy of Social Security there were clearly some Democrats on the floor who thought that that was taking it too far, and they did something that -- they booed.

RUSH: Well, Ted Koppel describing it, it happened numerous times, and they did something that was taking it too far. Bush wasn't lying about anything. Barack Obama was lying through his teeth last night. That's taking it too far. That demeaned the entire chamber. If you want to talk about demeaning the chamber, the president of the United States demeaned the chamber last night. He showed up and lied through his teeth. He was petulant, he was mean-spirited, he was angry, he was arrogant, conceited, condescending, but more than anything else he lied through his teeth and everybody knows it. Everybody knows it. Here's John Roberts, cookie-cutter anchor at the time working for CBS. He was the White House correspondent talking about the boos that Bush got in 2005.

ROBERTS: At a couple of points in this address it looked more like the British parliament than the United States Congress. I've never heard the minority party shout at the president during the State of the Union address.

RUSH: Yeah, never heard it, and who did it? It was the Democrats and it wasn't just one voice it was a whole bunch of them. See when they're in power anything goes and we're not to tread it. They have the floor and nobody else does and that's it. Now, this next bite is when the speech started to go -- well, I think it started to go south from the moment it started, first lie about the economy "we're back from the brink," foreclosures at an all-time high, teen unemployment at an all-time high since records have been kept, 560,000 more jobs lost. I mean it's breathtaking. But listen, this is when it finally dawned on people that they had to do something in response to the lies.

OBAMA: Improving our health care system only works if everybody does their part. And while there remain some significant details to be ironed out -- (laughter) I believe (laughter) -- I believe a broad consensus exists for the aspects of the plan I just outlined.

RUSH: He doesn't have a plan, he hasn't presented a plan and what he claimed last night cannot be found in any plan in the House or the Senate. He still didn't produce a plan.

RUSH: Okay, we're back. Rush Limbaugh, the EIB Network and talent on loan from God. This morning on Capitol Hill, Joe Wilson (Republican, South Carolina) spoke to the press.

WILSON: I've heard from the leadership that they wanted me to contact the White House and say that my statements were inappropriate. I did. I'm very grateful that the White House, in talking with them, they indicated that they appreciated the call and that we needed to have a civil discussion about the health care issues, and I certainly agree with that. And so I'm happy to discuss the health care issues and in particular on the issue which I think is very important, of whether the bills would include illegal aliens or not.

RUSH: All right, so the Republican leadership asked him to call the White House and apologize. That should tell you something. But he stuck to his guns on Obama's lie on illegal immigrants.

WILSON: There were two different amendments on the bill which would have provided for verification of persons having citizenship. They were almost party-line votes. On one of the amendments several Democrats actually voted with us. Also, the Congressional Resource Services has indicated that indeed the bills that are before Congress would include illegal aliens. And I think this is wrong. We need to be discussing issues specifically to help the American people, and that would not include illegal aliens.

RUSH: So he's sticking to his guns. He said the truth. Here's the thing that's amazing about this. Here you have a president lying through his teeth from the start of that speech through the end of that speech -- and in this speech he's accusing conservatives of lying about his plan, a plan which does not exist! He wasn't even grounded in reality last night. There is not one piece of legislation that has anything remotely like what Obama said was in his plan. He's not going to submit a plan. The only workable plan right now is the House plan, and nothing that he said is in it. The House bill contradicts everything Obama claimed last night! So while he is in the midst of lying about his plan, he is at the same time falsely accusing us of lying about it. So the question is: Why is it okay for Obama, as president of the United States, in a legislative setting to come out here and lie through his teeth and somehow it's bad form for Joe Wilson to tell the truth in the same setting? Because the fact of the matter is Obama was lying. What Joe Wilson said was true. They were harping today on the truth-teller. It ought to be the other way around.

RUSH: Yes, I'm disgusted now. I was disgusted last night. I think I slept disgusted. So Obama doesn't intend to provide health care to illegal aliens, huh? Well, I have a piece of legislation here, a summary. It's from 1998, when Obama was in the Illinois legislature: "Provide Funding for Social Services for Noncitizens." It was a bill that he supported and cosponsored: "Provide Funding for Social Services for Noncitizens." Here's the official summary: "To establish a grant program to provide financial assistance to states and local governments for the costs providing health care and educational services to noncitizens and to provide additional funding for the state criminal alien assassin program." He did this also as a United States Senator. Senator Clinton made the introductory remarks on this.

When he says, for example, "Nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have," it's very clever, but we've read the bill. No, nothing will "require" it. It's simply going to happen! Because the private sector cannot compete with an entity that does not have to make a profit. It's in the House bill. If you change any aspect, including the price of your premium, of your current plan, you are automatically disqualified from it and you are sent to the public plan! You're sent to the government-run option. Now, you're going to be coerced. He says, "Nothing in this plan will 'require'"? The plan will eventually force you there. He has said it in 2003 and 2007! We have the audio. Cookie, get it out of the archives again. He said it many, many times.

"The public option may take 10, 15, 20 years but that's how we're going to get there." A number of Democrats today said the same thing. He's lying through his teeth about this.

RUSH: The House Republican leader John Boehner just on television reading from the House bill the amendment that would provide health care to illegal aliens. Facts are facts. They're problematic for Obama. He believes that the power of his personality and the power of his biography and the power of his telepromptered oratory can overcome the truth. Well, he's going to have some trouble. March of 2007, Service Employees International Union health care forum, these are Obama's buddies, this is where he tells the truth. These are the people to whom he's honest. Now, he said last night, "If you like your doctor and if you like your insurance plan, you're going to be able to keep it, you'll never, ever have to give it up," blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, "nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change coverage, the doctor you have." Want to know his real intentions?

OBAMA: My commitment is to make sure that we've got universal health care for all Americans by the end of my first term as president. I would hope that we set up a system that allows those who can go through their employer to access a federal system or a state pool of some sort, but I don't think we're going to be able to eliminate employer coverage immediately. There's going to be potentially some transition process. I can envision a decade out or 15 years out or 20 years out.

RUSH: But he wants to eliminate employer coverage. He wants to eliminate private sector coverage. This is just two years ago, my friends, to his buddies at the Service Employees International Union. Here back in 2003 speaking to more of his buddies at the AFL-CIO, a conference while campaigning for the United States Senate.

OBAMA: I happen to be a proponent of single payer universal health care coverage. A single payer health care plan, universal health care plan. That's what I'd like to see.

RUSH: We know what he wants. We know he wants to legalize all illegals via amnesty. We know that he wants them to all have health coverage and health insurance, and he wants a public option. He wants single payer, government-run. Everything he said last night was to the contrary. There's no other way to say it. It was disgusting; it was demeaning; it was insulting to the office of the presidency. It was fraudulent. One guy told the truth in that House last night, and that was Joe Wilson.

RUSH: Grab a quick call. Ron in San Francisco. Great to have you on the EIB Network, sir. Hello.

CALLER: Hey, dittos, Rush, from one of the millions that was cheering Joe Wilson last night and one of the millions that are pissed off because he apologized.

RUSH: Well, he was made to. The Republican leadership, which should tell you something, asked him not just to apologize, but to call the White House and do it.

CALLER: Yeah, well, I'm just listening to you here, and the way you're describing Obama. I have a different take. I thought Obama was nervous last night. I thought he was nervous as hell, and he did not sound like a president that I'm used to hearing give uplifting speeches, that's for sure.

RUSH: No, he didn't. There's a great question we could ask today. How many people is Obama going to save today? And the next question, how many people is our health care system going to save today? Obama's going to save nobody. By the way, he lied through his teeth about these two poorhouse examples he gave, people who had their mean insurance company withdraw coverage. He just told half-truths about those. I got the evidence coming up. Now, how many people will he save today? How many people will our health care system save today? You are exactly right. There was nothing inspiring. He couldn't give anywhere near the speech he gave to the school kids last night. I don't know whether he was nervous or not. It was a campaign speech. It wasn't presidential. It was insulting. And I, frankly, am fed up with the president of the United States trashing virtually every aspect of things that make this country successful and great.

RUSH: Did you see it last night on TV? Did you watch TV? Did you hear it on the radio? What an historic event. None of us will forget it as long as we live. History will treasure it for decades. Derek Jeter, shortstop, New York Yankees, tied the career hit record of Lou Gehrig, the pride of the Yankees. That's what people are going to remember from last night. Barack Obama ignored something major last night, and that is America wants jobs, not changes in health care.

Lest we forget, Dems booed Bush at the 2005 state of the union address (with video):

RUSH: Meridian, Mississippi, Cindy, you're next, thanks for your patience, and hello.

CALLER: Thank you. And I wanted to say that I think Joe Wilson was a real-life example of the little boy in the children's story The Emperor Has No Clothes last night. It was a perfect setting for him to draw attention to all America that what Barack Obama is saying is really just trying to sell us a bill of goods when in reality he has no clothes on whatsoever.

RUSH: Exactly right. That was snake oil. That was snake oil all night long last night. Amy in Medina, Ohio. Hi, welcome to the EIB Network.

CALLER: Thank you, Rush. Mega dittos. I just think it's interesting to not only look at the president's words, but the argument approach that's using. The president used the classical Hegelian dialectic process, and basically it is guiding people's thoughts by using a thesis and an antithesis; pitting two groups against each other to come to a predetermined outcome. I was in shock because the president said, "We have two extremes. We have the single-payer system and then we have the free market approach where we just have competition." And, you know, he's pitting these two groups against each other to get to his predetermined outcome, which everyone's going to think, "Okay, is a synthesis." But it's not a synthesis where Congress and the Senate are going to sit down and hammer out the details. It's a synthesis where he's going to have this outcome that is going to be brought into the bill.

RUSH: Well, that's a good point. The Hegelian dialectic is something that a lot of people might not know about. This is Marx, Engles, a common approach that the Soviets used, the communists around the world used to advance ideas. Basically what you're saying... If I could translate, what you're saying is, the president is out there saying, "No, no, no, no, no! There's not going to be a government plan. Oh, no, no, no!"

RUSH: At the same time, he's trashing insurance companies and the private sector and saying he's going to bring 'em up and he's gonna raise 'em right and he's gonna make sure they do right and so forth. He's going to run 'em!

RUSH: He's admitting that there's going to be a public plan while denying there's going to be a public plan, that's the whole point.

CALLER: Exactly. And he wants to pitch the two extremes so that they look like -- I don't know a better word -- idiots. So that people say, "Well, no we don't want this and we don't want the single payer," and he will come to this result that --

RUSH: Yeah, but you see the point is the free market is not an extremist position.

RUSH: I don't think it's going to work to paint... Look, since this guy has come into office look at who he's demonized and look what he's taken over. He's demonized Big Oil. (Well, I stay constantly. The Democrat Party's enemies list is anybody that makes a profit.) But he personally has demonized doctors. He has demonized hospitals, he has demonized insurance companies. This guy never says one thing about the greatness of this country. Ever. He doesn't have one single concept of American exceptionalism. He doesn't buy into that at all. He hasn't said one thing about the greatness of our health care system and the things it does good. In his mind it's a horrible mess, it's causing people to die, and if we don't do his plan more people are going to die.

It's just ridiculous. Now, let's go back, June 24th, the ABC Obama infomercial. I will never forget this. He said, "More people are going to die if we don't do my health care plan." Remember Jane Sturm, the audience member whose mother was now over 105. She's still alive. At age 100 she needed a pacemaker, and a specialist refused to do it, said she was too old. But she went to another specialist. She had the option to do that because the free market health care system allows her that. One specialist said, "Nah, I'm not going to waste my time. Your mother is too old." The other specialist saw her. The other specialist saw a spunk, a joy of life and said, "You know what? I'm going to go for it. I'm going to put the pacemaker in." So she's still alive after getting the pacemaker. Fine and dandy, hunky-dory.

Jane Sturm asked this question to the president of the United States: "Outside the medical criteria for prolonging life of somebody who's old, is there any consideration that can be given for a certain spirit, a certain joy of living, a quality of life, or is it just a medical cutoff at a certain age?" Now, remember, Obama says there is no death panel. "We're not going to be offing grandma!" Well, here's a woman who brings in a grandma, talks about a grandma. Imagine this! Folks, in our country, a citizen asks Fidel Castro, Barack Obama, "Will you spare my mother if you see that she has a joy for living? Will you spare my mother if she has spunk? Will you spare my mother if she has a great quality of life?" And here was the answer from the president of the United States.

OBAMA: I don't think that we can make judgments based on people's "spirit." Uh, that would be, uh, a pretty subjective decision to be making. I think we have to have rules that, uh, say that we are going to provide good, quality care for all people. End-of-life care is one of the most difficult sets of decisions that we're going to have to make. But understand that those decisions are already being made in one way or another. If they're not being made under Medicare and Medicaid, they're being made by private insurers. At least we can let doctors know and your mom know that, you know what, maybe this isn't going to help. Maybe you're better off, uhhh, not having the surgery but taking, uh, the painkiller.

RUSH: So Barack Obama, who says more people are going to die if we don't do his plan just answers a woman: No, no, we're not going to save your mother -- and it's none of his damn business whether her mother gets a pacemaker or not. And the very idea that an American citizen we've gotten to the point has to ask the president of the United States to save her mother ought to be a telltale sign that we're on the wrong road and going in the wrong direction. We're on the wrong road in the wrong car, we got the wrong driver, and we're headed in the wrong direction. And Obama says, "Ah, take a pain pill. Ah, we're not going to take into account anybody's spunk, joy of life, spirit. Nah, we can't do that. We have different criteria," and he has the audacity to lecture us on scare tactics. Listen to this from last night.

OBAMA: Everyone in this room knows what will happen if we do nothing. Our deficit will grow, more families will go bankrupt. More businesses will close. More Americans will lose their coverage when they are sick and need it the most, and more will die as a result.

RUSH: And he lectures us about scare tactics. It's Barack Obama health care plan that will cause more people to die. President Barack Obama's health care plan... Well (sigh), he doesn't have one. He was just making it up last night because what he was saying last night doesn't exist anywhere in Congress. But the plans now before Congress will end up killing more people than the private sector health business ever has or has contemplated. Michael Tanner made a good point in the New York Post that's up at National Review Online with Obama caught lying about nothing in the health care plan requiring you to change the type of coverage you have or your doctor.

"[I]n virtually every appearance he makes, the president repeated 'Nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have.'" He said it last night. "'"Nothing in our plan requires you to change what you have."' That of course is quite simply untrue. The president favors a requirement that everyone must carry basic health insurance," which is right out of the Baucus bill in the Senate. "But the individual mandate that he favors and included in the bills before Congress doesn't just say you have to have insurance," the mandate in the bills before Congress "specifies what benefits your insurance must have, even if you don't want those benefits or they boost the cost of your policy."

It is going to change! It's in the bills. It cannot help but change. Change is mandated. This was despicable; it was demeaning. It was totally lacking in integrity, honesty, and even decency and class last night. It was as fraudulent as the CNN poll that came out last night that said two-thirds of the people who watched the speech changed their minds favorably toward Obama's plan. Well, the sample of 427 adult Americans, a phone survey the sample was 45% Democrat and 18% Republican. That's more than twice, almost three times as many Democrats as Republicans in the poll last night. And that poll was taken just so the media could jump on it last night and this morning to write and tell the story of how Obama turned it around.

CALLER: Dittos, Rush. Last night when I listened to the president's speech something became clear to me. He says he's going to pay for this health care by eliminating waste and fraud from Medicaid and Medicare. He's been in office seven months, it's evident he made the statement. It's also evident that he must have known about the waste and fraud. How come he hasn't done anything about the waste and fraud --

RUSH: Well, exactly right. If you're going to eliminate waste and fraud, do it now, don't wait for four years when the program implements. But, look, that's not even the point. Ladies and gentlemen, this whole business about eliminating waste and fraud. This is essentially what Obama said: The waste, fraud, and abuse in government is going to be used by the government to pay for more government. We're going to cut Medicare $500 billion. We're not going to cut treatment, we're just going to get rid of the waste and the fraud and then we're going to use that $500 billion to grow government. It's nonsensical. Nobody believes this other than the condemned dead heads that make up Obama's base, but nobody with any economic literacy or any common sense in general is going to believe that.

CALLER: I was listening to the speech last night and I heard Obama indicate that everyone would be required to have insurance, just like states require you to have car insurance. However, a state doesn't require you to have car insurance; it's the car itself that's insured. So if you think that way, perhaps these facilities like urgent care themselves should be insured.

RUSH: Well, but there's a more fundamental difference than that. If you don't have a car, you don't have to have insurance which is your point. But the purpose for automobile insurance is not to protect you. It's to protect the person you plow into. I mean, the analogy does not hold at all. And with auto insurance, you can buy it from anybody you want. In health insurance, you have to buy it in the state that you live. Now, the president made a point last night that 90% of people in Alabama buy health insurance from one company. So his solution is that company sucks. That company sucks. That's a monopoly. We gotta bust up that company. And we're going to do it by giving people options with a public option. No. No. What sucks is the state law making that requirement the way it is or the federal law that requires that you can only buy insurance in the state in which you live. The fix is the free market. You abandon this whole notion of boundaries, you let people buy health insurance from any company they want anywhere in the country. You watch the competition set in when that happens.

You let insurance companies sell the kind of policies that people want to buy, let 'em tailor policies to whatever individuals want, and you got a problem solved much faster than we're going to solve it with Obamacare. Folks, the private sector is his enemy, I'm telling you. I can't go through it again, but if you weren't here in the first hour, I did a translation of sorts of Obama's speech of what he was really saying last night. The traditions, institutions, the greatness of this country, the parts of it that make it great, he doesn't like. He doesn't like the Constitution. (doing Obama impression) "I didn't vote for the Constitution. The Constitution was put together by a bunch of slave owners. I don't like that. I didn't vote for that." If they could trash it in front of our eyes, they would. They're in the process of doing it now. The simple solution to 90% of the people in Alabama have to buy insurance from one company, if that's even true, but let's say it is, get rid of the state law, get rid of the law that mandates you have to buy insurance from a company in your state. You can buy all kinds of insurance for other things from anybody. Lloyds of London if they'll sell you the policy for whatever you want to insure. The problems in our health care system really have been mandated by government, state and federal, that have limited choice, caused prices to rise, no relationship to the customer, the patient and the cost provider.

Columbia, South Carolina, Jan. Thank you for waiting. You're next on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Thank you, Rush. Good to talk to you. I enjoy listening to your program.

CALLER: I've been a nurse for over 25 years and I've just seen an increasing trend, that basically a lot of people that received these government Medicare, Medicaid, whatever, basically are just totally irresponsible with their own health care. They do nothing but actually hurt themselves. I have patients who are much younger than I am that come in and have a chronic problem like asthma or bronchitis but they're still smoking two packs a day. How do you afford two packs of cigarettes a day and you're on Medicare and Medicaid?

CALLER: How do you have a body mass index which is a ratio of your height to your weight that's two times, more than two times what's considered morbidly obese? And you have back and knee problems? Give me a break!

RUSH: Obama's going to fix that because they're going to put mandates in there that you're going to have to do lifestyle changes, preventive care and all that. But you see, here's the thing. The kind of people you're talking about are, in Barack Obama's mind, the rightful owners of the country. They're only obese and fat, they're only smoking, they only got asthma because our oppressive capitalist society has depressed them. They haven't had a chance. They've been held back. What was rightfully theirs has been stolen by evil corporations, small business owners and the rich. And that's why they're in the mess. And these are the people we must insure and make sure that they do get all the care that they need because they're at such a disadvantage because of the oppressive society they live in.

CALLER: Hello, dear. I just wanted to tell you something about the auto insurance in the state of Virginia and I don't know how many other states have this regulation, but if you sell, give away, or your car dies and you cancel your insurance, your driver's license automatically gets canceled. And most people find that out the hard way. You have to maintain some sort of insurance to maintain your driver's license.

CALLER: Exactly. Yes. Yep. So you still have to take out some form of auto insurance even though you are between automobiles.

RUSH: But, what if you never had a car and you don't have a driver's license to begin with, they don't require you to be insured there?

CALLER: Yes, because you can't get a driver's license, you have to get an ID card for people who don't drive.

RUSH: Okay. So in Virginia it's not mandatory that you have to have car insurance, which was the point. Now, I understand what you're saying. If you've had a car, you lose it, get rid of it, whatever, if you get close to a car, you gotta have a driver's license, because you might get in it and want to drive, and to get a driver's license you gotta have insurance. But you don't have to get a driver's license, and you don't have to get a car. In that case, you don't have to get insurance. I mean, the point is, the analogy of health care insurance to auto insurance breaks down this way. When you go get health insurance -- and, by the way, it is impossible to insure good health. That's not what it is. You can't do it. You insure bad health, you insure catastrophic illness, and all you're doing is taking a risk and the insurance company is joining you in the risk. You're not buying health insurance to make sure you don't pass the flu to somebody. But when you buy auto insurance, you're making sure that you can pay if you plow into somebody or their house or cause some kind of damage to either property or a person with your car.

If health care insurance worked that way, you would have to go buy health insurance to protect yourself from being sued if you spread AIDS around or if you spread the flu around or what have you. But you're not doing that. You're buying health insurance to protect yourself against a catastrophic cost that comes down the line regarding your own health. Now it's gotten all out of whack, I mean people are going in for standard checkups and buying Band-Aids and so forth with their prescription supplement or their health care coverage in general. It's just absurd. More and more stories I'm seeing -- we had the call from a woman yesterday who was able to get a X-ray reduced from $269 to $20 bucks just by paying cash and shopping around for it.

I was in the hospital here four years ago, or three, hell, time flies, and I told them I'm paying cash, three days, I'm paying cash, going to put it on a credit card and it cut the cost in half because they didn't have to mess around with paperwork and dealing with copay reimbursements, whatever the garbage is. You ought to try it, just standard operating procedure, go in for some kind of medical treatment, offer to pay cash and see what happens and I'll betcha if you shop around enough you can find someplace that's much cheaper than if you were using your insurance. It would be a lesson to you to find out how the whole system could be changed in a positive way to reduce costs if just that single thing alone were to happen.

RUSH: Now, from the dietitians at the op-ed page of the New York Times: "How Government Will Control Our Diet," and this was published yesterday. Now, I want you to listen to me on this. "Big Food vs. Big Insurance," New York Times op-ed column here: "To listen to President Obama's speech on Wednesday night, or to just about anyone else in the health care debate, you would think that the biggest problem with health care in America is the system itself -- perverse incentives, inefficiencies, unnecessary tests and procedures, lack of competition, and greed. No one disputes that the $2.3 trillion we devote to the health care industry is often spent unwisely, but the fact that the United States spends twice as much per person as most European countries on health care can be substantially explained, as a study released last month says, by our being fatter. Even the most efficient health care system that the administration could hope to devise would still confront a rising tide of chronic disease linked to diet. That's why our success in bringing health care costs under control ultimately depends on whether Washington can summon the political will to take on and reform a second, even more powerful industry: the food industry." The political will to take on the food industry? What the hell do they think has been happening? New York City trans fats, now they're going to have a tax on soda?

"According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, three-quarters of health care spending now goes to treat 'preventable chronic diseases.' Not all of these diseases are linked to diet -- there's smoking, for instance -- but many, if not most, of them are. We're spending $147 billion to treat obesity, $116 billion to treat diabetes, and hundreds of billions more to treat cardiovascular disease." I found a website the other day, I should have printed it out, maybe I can find it in my website history. Two guys independently of each other, two doctors dealing with diabetes back in 1961 both came to the same conclusion to control type two diabetics, an all-meat diet. Now, this was before all the warnings about cholesterol and high fat and all of the animal rights people had come along, and they just said all-meat diet, nothing but meat, long before the nation ever heard of Robert Atkins.

An all-meat diet lowered cholesterol, lowered blood sugar, people lost weight. You could no more recommend that today and stay credible in your field than anything else you could do, and this is 1961. There might have been five years separation between these two guys, but they never knew, and they were researching other things. They were not studying how to lower diabetes, erectile dysfunction, they were studying high blood pressure, and they found out that all the test subjects were having this weird thing happen to them. It was a total accident. The same thing with these two guys, were studying something else entirely, and they found that with an all-meat diet, diabetes lowered, blood sugar lowered, weight lowered, cholesterol, all these things. And so here come these clowns -- this is Michael Pollan, by the way, writing this, basically this piece is, "We gotta control the food industry. We gotta get Washington to control the food industry." Yeah, community service. Picket Big Food, picket Big Retail food, picket grocery stores, pick the slaughter houses, picket manufacturers.

The American way of eating has become the elephant in the room in the debate over health care. The president has made a few notable allusions to it, and, by planting her vegetable garden on the South Lawn, Michelle Obama has tried to focus our attention on it." Make me gag! "Just last month, Mr. Obama talked about putting a farmers' market in front of the White House, and building new distribution networks to connect local farmers to public schools so that student lunches might offer more fresh produce and fewer Tater Tots. He's even floated the idea of taxing soda. . To put it more bluntly, the government is putting itself in the uncomfortable position of subsidizing both the costs of treating Type 2 diabetes and the consumption of high-fructose corn syrup. Why the disconnect? Probably because reforming the food system is politically even more difficult than reforming the health care system." Now, the people that read the New York Times end up buying the stuff just like these skulls full of mush at these Ivy League schools.

So now Big Food is the reason the health care costs are so high. Big Food! And we need Washington to control it. Reforming the food system? It goes on and on and on. Michael Pollan, by the way, is a contributing writer for the Times magazine, a professor of journalism at the University of California Berkeley. "All of which suggests that passing a health care reform bill, no matter how ambitious, is only the first step in solving our health care crisis. To keep from bankrupting ourselves, we will then have to get to work on improving our health -- which means going to work on the American way of eating." Mr. Pollan, it's none of your business. It's none of Obama's business how anybody eats. It's not my business when he grabs a quick trip to some burger joint. I don't know what he eats in the White House. Well, I do know, he's eating $100-a-pound Kobe beef.

But then there's a companion story here from Newsweek called: "The Real Cause of Obesity. It's not gluttony. It's genetics. Why our moralizing misses the point. Despite receiving a MacArthur genius award for her work in Alabama 'forging an inspiring model of compassionate and effective medical care in one of the most underserved regions of the United States,' Regina Benjamin's qualifications to be surgeon general have been questioned. Why? She is overweight. 'It tends to undermine her credibility,' Dr. Marcia Angell, former editor of The New England Journal of Medicine, said in an interview with ABC News. 'I do think at a time when a lot of public-health concern is about the national epidemic of obesity, having a surgeon general who is noticeably overweight raises questions in people's minds.' It is not enough, it seems, that the obese must suffer the medical consequences of their weight, consequences that include diabetes, heart disease, and cancer, and that cause nearly 300,000 deaths in the United States each year."

Do you realize -- this is another thing, what is our goal here? Have zero deaths a year? You know, life happens. Life happens. People live their lives, they have free will. They live their lives. But, no, no, no, we're not going to be doing that anymore, we're going to be living ordered lives. "In our society perhaps no group is more stigmatized than the obese." Well, I don't know. You ought to try being a fat conservative if you want to find out what being stigmatized is, but nevertheless. "Genetic studies have shown that the particular set of weight-regulating genes that a person has is by far the most important factor in determining how much that person will weigh. The heritability of obesity -- a measure of how much obesity is due to genes versus other factors -- is about the same as the heritability of height. It's even greater than that for many conditions that people accept as having a genetic basis, including heart disease, breast cancer, and schizophrenia. As nutrition has improved over the past 200 years --" Wait a minute. The New York Times just said it's gone to hell and we need to have Washington to control it. "-- Americans have gotten much taller on average, but it is still the genes that determine who is tall or short today. The same is true for weight. Although our high-calorie, sedentary lifestyle contributes to the approximately 10-pound average weight gain of Americans compared to the recent past, some people are more severely affected by this lifestyle than others. That's because they have inherited genes that increase their predisposition for accumulating body fat."

Now, this could all be BS, a piece written just to give cover to the obese surgeon general, who knows with this State-Controlled Media these days. But the bottom line, he concludes, obesity is not a personal choice. The obese are so primarily as a result of their genes. Never mind. We have to have food control. We have to have Washington control and reform the food industry, agribusiness. And this is not new. The left has been trying to get rid of the meat industry for who knows how long.

By the way, is this the economy Obama says he saved? "The US poverty rate hit its highest level in 11 years in 2008." That doesn't even include the last nine months, then. We got the highest level of poverty in 11 years in 2008 and that doesn't even factor this disastrous administration. "The government defines poverty as an annual income of $22,025 for a family of four, $17,163 for a family of three and $14,051 for a family of two." US poverty rate hits 11-year high as recession bites. CNNmoney.com: "'Word on the Street: No Job Prospects' -- The economic picture has started to improve, but those out of work see no recovery in sight." Next story, Geithner, town hall meeting on CNBC said unemployment will absolutely be lower one year from today, even though the word on the street from CNN is that there's no way. There's no sign that the employment picture will improve any time soon.

RUSH: I just got an e-mail from a friend who's reading Michael Pollan's book. He's the guy who wrote the op-ed in the New York Times that I just shared with you about reforming the food industry, and the name of his book is In Defense of Food. And my friend who's reading the book tells me that Pollan makes, in the book, a very, very strong case that the reason the food system is so bad is because of government and that there's a food movement out there called "nutritionism," which he says is not about nutrition but is an ideology. And he says that anthropologists have, over hundreds of years, found that an extraordinary range of diets are adaptable to humans: Meat, veggies, rice, lots of grain, no grain. All humans could adapt to these diets but he says in this book only the Western diet causes all the illnesses. Even in other countries our diet has ill effects. And he says that this is all due to processed food and the food is processed mostly due to government intervention and laws. Now, I don't know. That's a brief summary of what he's saying in the book. When I read his piece in the New York Times, I did not pick up any of that, but regardless. Just to be fair.

U.S. poverty rate his an 11 year high in 2008; I wonder where it will be for 2009?

The European Commission advises consumers of the environmental hazards posed by CFLs. If one breaks, you're advised to air out rooms and avoid using vacuum cleaners to prevent exposure to mercury in the bulbs. You can't just throw out an old bulb. It must be properly thrown out, lest your bedroom or family room become a Superfund toxic waste site.

Mercury is considered by environmentalists to be among the most toxic of toxic substances and, yes, it is dangerous if ingested or handled over time. We've been warned that high concentrations in fish are dangerous to pregnant women. We've been told mercury in vaccines causes autism.

How are we going to pay for health care reform? More taxes, of course. Here are a few pages from the Baucus’ revenue options:

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 #92	Kukis Digests and Opines on this Week’s News and Views	September 13, 2009