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.

And if you are a believer in Jesus Christ, always remember: We do not struggle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places (Eph. 6:12).

A U.S. Naval vessel, the USS New York, built in part from some of the steel from the fallen twin towers, was completed and sailed out of New Orleans this week. Hundreds of Americans lined the Mississippi River waving American flags and cheering the vessel’s maiden voyage.

Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee (D–Texas) spent time on the Congress floor denouncing Rush Limbaugh, and urging that the NFL not allow him to purchase, as a member of a larger group, an NFL team.

Two 6 year olds caught our attention this week; the young man who brought his cub scout spork to school and was almost forced to spend 45 days in a school detention center; and a young man who was thought to have been carried away by a hotair balloon contraption (built by his inventor father). In the latter case, it turned out that he and his family had been on the television show “Wife Swap” on 2 previous occasions. Latest developments is, this may have all been a publicity stunt.

On “The New Adventures of Old Christine,” a television sitcom, the characters suddenly start discussing healthcare reform and 45,000 is given as the number of those who are uninsured. Do you remember product placement?

Both Reuters and AP release stories indicating that the recession is over, while unemployment continues to go up and food banks are overwhelmed and running out.

Steven Wynn, CEO of Wynn Resorts in Las Vegas: “Government has never increased the standard of living of one single human being in civilization's history. For some reason that simple truth has evaded everybody. The only thing that creates an increased standard of living is giving someone a job, the demand for their labor -- whether it's you and I, Chris, or anybody else. The people that are paying the price for this juggernaut of federal spending are the middle class and the working class of America...And soaring rhetoric and great speeches with or without a teleprompter aren't going to change the truth, and the truth is: The biggest enemy, the biggest obstacle that working middle-class America has is government spending.”

When speaking of the harsh discipline facing a 6 year old cub scout for bringing a spork to school, Shep Smith commented, “Someone needs to get a brain cell.”

“If Jeffrey Dalmer could throw an accurate 75 yard pass, the NFL would hire him as just some guy with an eating disorder.” caller to the Laura Ingraham show.

“He’s really a very nice guy; he just gets a lot of death threats.” Brittani about Steve Crowder (she’s the cute girl eating the sandwich in Steve’s rap that’s a peace prize).

"Under current rules, many banks make donations to and enter into partnership with ACORN and its affiliates to meet their obligations under the CRA [the Community Reinvestment Act]. Millions of dollars flows from these banks into ACORN in what amounts to borderline extortion," said Michelle Bachmann.

Dick Morris on Obama-care without the public option: “This just means you have your own puppet, but the same person is pulling the strings.”

Chris Matthews on Rush Limbaugh: “You guys see Live and Let Die, the great Bond film with Yaphet Kotto as the bad guy, Mr. Big? In the end they jam a big CO₂ pellet in his face and he blew up. I have to tell you, Rush Limbaugh is looking more and more like Mr. Big, and at some point somebody's going to jam a CO₂ pellet into his head and he's going to explode like a giant blimp. That day may come. Not yet. But we'll be there to watch. I think he's Mr. Big, I think Yaphet Kotto. Are you watching, Rush?” Bear in mind, this is a newsman making a comment about a private citizen.

“Whatever happened to my body, my choice?“ Lores Ripscalla in reference to the mandate that some hospital workers take the seasonal flu shot.

“The president's honest attempt to promote world peace through the same methods taught by Jesus Christ are met with contempt by a country whose collective consciousness is extraordinarily fearful and at times, sacrilegious.” writes Russell Simmons.

“What would you do if you are told, ‘You will lose your healthcare insurance unless you take the flue shot’?” caller to Lores Live Show.

This is the scariest thing yet—it appears as though Obama might be listening to Joe Biden. I think (and hope) that the president is just making it appear as though he is listening to Biden’s advice.

These next two videos need to be viewed together. The first is Anita Dunn, top media strategist for the White House, claims that FoxNews is the research arm of the Republican party. This first clip is the FoxNews story on Dunn’s remarks and it is an excellent story. The second is a graduation message which she gave. If you do not know what is coming, you are going to be quite surprised. If you wonder why Glenn Beck’s ratings are going through the roof, the second two vids will explain that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jCL1DRbRU8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXJjoruQs0Y

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bYOjj7EMww

Is any other news station covering this?

Today Show’s interviews with Rush Limbaugh (this is an excellent interview; heavily edited, but not unfairly so):

I could be wrong, but I am not aware of anytime when Al Gore has taken questions; and I do not believe that he has publically debated global warming before. However, he recently opened the floor for questions, and one person asked him a real question...if you did not see it, you need to see it:

Great FoxNews Sunday, which included Jennifer Granholm, governor of MIchigan and Steve Wynn, CEO of Wynn Resorts in Las Vegas. Wynn made the same point many times, but it was nice to see someone who actually knew what he was talking about comment on our economic problems:

Michelle Bachman on Glenn Beck’s show, discussing how the government is forcing banks to either make bad loans or to pay a fee to ACORN:

This quite amazed me—The TV show, The New Adventures of Old Christine, spent a minute or so selling public healthcare as a part of their show. Was this a top-town push? Was this simply the writers and producers of this show just selling the politics? Juan Williams leads a discussion on this (the clip of the show is included):

These next two videos need to be seen together. Alan Grayson in Congress saying that the Republican plan is “Don’t get sick, and if you do get sick, die quickly.”

Robert Reich, an Obama advisor and former labor secretary (under President Bill Clinton, I believe). He claims that if a candidate was going to be honest, he would warn young people that, health care is going to cost you a lot of money and “...if you are very old, we are not going to give you all that technology and all those drugs for the last couple years of your life in order to keep you going for a couple of months; it is to expensive; so we are going to let you die.”

Keith Ellison telling us that most of the people are for Obama-care; and that Alan Grayson’s presentation was commendable. Ellison also tells us that there are enough people right now to pass the healthcare bill with the public option.

Chris Matthews seems to enjoy a special moment when he hears Alan Grayson call Republicans foot-draggers and knuckle-draggers.

For guys only: Just in case you are getting older, and your pickup lines have lost their punch, try saying, “I have a time machine at my house, but it only works if you are naked.” Apparently this is working for Oberto Airaudi, who founded such a sect which even attracted German singer Nena. This is real, by the way, it is not a parody:

Steve Crowder raps about the peace prize (“Desmond Tutu’s got nothing on me”) (the guy makes me laugh):

1) You are going to see more and more graphs of the number of years we have fought in Iraq and Afghanistan as compared to other wars which we have fought. But, do you know what you will NEVER see? A comparison of the number of dead U.S. soldiers in these various wars. Another thing you will NEVER see is a comparison of the innocent who die as collateral damage. This is because our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been very low casualty wars; and the surge strategy has dramatically reduced the number of innocents killed.

2) I am not sure that FoxNews clearly understood the White House attacks against FoxNews. (1) The White house right now is completely unprofessional and they have no idea what to do. (2) They think that one of the keys to their success is finding a villain and exposing that villain. (3) They want to stop the bleeding and keep more people from going over to FoxNews. They are hoping that vilifying FoxNews will accomplish that.

3) Smart foreign rulers have already figured out, the first thing that you do with Obama is praise him for his wisdom, and that way, you both start on the same page.

4) The opening skit on Saturday Night Live had Barrack Obama getting angry and being transformed in The Rock Obama ala the Hulk (played by the Rock). I hope that CNN does a fact check on this, because I don’t believe that President Obama really has the power to change himself into a Hulk-like person.

5) I told you in the past that Obama was decidedly uninterested in our foreign wars. So far, he has given over 20 healthcare speeches giving assurances about a bill that does not yet exist. However, since he has been approach by General McChrystal to increase our troop numbers in Afghanistan, has our President done anything at all to sway the American people on this issue (who are split about 50-50 on this issue)? If this is the real war and the war of necessity, as he claimed in his campaign speeches, then where is Obama’s soaring rhetoric on this issue?

6) Michelle Bachman, Republican Congresswoman, discovered that ACORN is also funded by banks, as this is their way of meeting their obligations under the Community Reinvestment Act. So when you hear that Democrats are going to better regulate this or that sector of the economy, often this includes financial requirements as Bachman cited.

7) Insurance without preconditions, means people do not buy it until they need it. That is going to make insurance prices go through the roof.

8) Dick Morris pointed out that, if too much money is spent by an HMO or by a medical insurance company in relation to this or that malady, they will be fined. Who decides if they have spent too much money? A government bureaucrat or a panel of bureaucrats.

9) Why isn’t President Obama offering a beer summit to bring together Rush Limbaugh and the Reverend Al Sharpton?

10) Have you noticed that the White House continually requires a villain? It might be Rush Limbaugh, FoxNews, lobbyists, medical insurance companies (which are conforming to federal mandates), and doctors (particularly those who cut off people’s feet unnecessarily).

According to www.recovery.gov 30,000 jobs have been saved or created by the Stimulus Bill at a cost of $71,473/job.

80% of the states which Obama has traveled to are key states in his election 3 years hence.

43% of voters say that they would vote to re-elect President Obama if the 2012 election were held today (October 2009)

Interestingly enough, Obama’s approval ratings in the specific area of Afghanistan, Iran, and the economy are almost dead even; but...

52% of Americans would prefer the status quo with respect to healthcare, rather than to be subjected to Obama-care.

There was a lot of news about the Rush Limbaugh involvement with purchasing of the St. Louis Rams, as long as these news stations could quote those phoney quotes. However, as soon as it became clear that Rush would fight back legally, suddenly this story ended, with a few apologies and hardly another word (except on FoxNews).

Obama giving a litany of promises with regards to national healthcare. “Cheaper! For you, free! For you, we will pay you to have healthcare insurance. Pre-existing conditions? No problem. Accident? Sign up for insurance when you arrive at the hospital.”

[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].

The White House attacks FoxNews. It is not clear yet if there will be any fall out from this.

There is a concerted effort to keep Rush Limbaugh from becoming a part owner of the St. Louis Rams. So far, there is no fall out.

Obama backed down on a tax for company’s doing business overseas. Lobbyists talked him out of it.

Here’s a name I never expected to put here: Diane Feinstein said last Sunday that Obama ought to listen to his generals on the ground.

Divisive = making a clearly conservative statement or saying something which disagrees with Obama’s White House.

Will you still push healthcare reform if a majority of the American people oppose it?

Do you believe that White House communications ought to be headed by someone who considers Chairman Mao to be a great and wise person? Were you aware of these statements?

If you think that Rush Limbaugh made any of those racist remarks; of if you think his remarks about McNabb were racist.

Okay, maybe I should have predicted, as soon as we hit 10% unemployment, Obama will experience a big drop in his favor ability ratings, rather than say it would put him below 50%.

The news keeps telling us that the recession is over; here is the Reuters story:

Is Obama spending so much because he knows that he will be able to tax it out of us via healthcare reform and cap and trade.

Because you have given imaginative sentences and because you are my congressman, I wanted to suggest something to you:

We have 10's of thousands of young men in jail who come from single parent homes, whose life took a bad turn because they had no strong parent in the household to teach them real discipline. We have a strong need for more military men. The two need to be put together. Many jails have boot camp opportunities, but these are imitation boot camps. Men need to be taken from these imitation boot camps and, if they appear not to be totally and completely lost, put into a real boot camp with the chance to serve their country, grow up, and, upon a successful period of time in the military, be able to re-enter society clean with an expunged record.

Obviously, our current president would oppose legislation which would allow the military to take such persons and for states to set up their own programs to put this into motion. However, Congress could turn around in as little as 1 year from now, so I am hoping that you could begin to craft legislation which would move us in this direction.

What I forgot to include is, this would probably be a deficit neutral program, as a person the state is paying for is moved into the military, where he receives training, deployment and a salary. Even though it may cost more for a soldier than a criminal, the likelihood is, this soldier will become a productive member of society instead of being a lifelong burden on society.

Business creates jobs, and jobs which produce something. Small businesses has been our job engine. Rush Limbaugh offered up a bi-partisan plan for economic growth. Many months ago, I offered up a free enterprise approach. For Obama’s first big bill, which he knew was going to pass, all he need to do was put in about 40% free enterprise solutions—a lowering of the capital gains taxes; a more fair tax where those making over $250,000/year are not taxed more (as about half of these are not individuals but small businesses). Obama would have gotten Republican votes—this would have been a bipartisan bill. Obama would have been seen as a truly bipartisan president, as he presented himself during the campaign. Furthermore, jobs would have been created and our economy would have turned around in no time at all. Massive government programs do not turn around an economy; massive government spending, about half of which are bribes, might give a shot to the economy, just like a sugar-rush invigorates a child. However, an hour later, the invigoration is gone. Well, Obama did not even do it that well. He passed a job killing stimulus bill, the largest in U.S. history, which was designed to pay off a lot of political debt and start to kick in before the next election cycle.

First of all, Obama has no concept of what being bipartisan is. To him, bipartisanship is when you bribe a few Republicans by sending money to their constituents in order to get their vote. Or, sit down and have lunch with them, and calmly explain why you are right, and how they ought to listen to you. However, the idea that bipartisanship is actually using Republican ideas is either something Obama does not understand or, he simply knew he had the votes, so that he could do exactly what he wanted to do.

That he pushed through a bill which was a bribery pork bill indicates that (1) he has no clue as to how to do anything for the economy (after all, he told Congress to cobble something together) or (2) he doesn’t really care. Joblessness means more dependence upon government, and that is fine with him. Evidence for this is, Obama has done nothing else about the economy, except tell people to talk it up.

What I suggested would have been a brilliant political move. Obama would have kept his high popularity and he could have taken credit for the bill (after all, people still give Bill Clinton props for a balanced budget). And he could have sold a robust public healthcare plan or cap and trade (maybe not both).

This tells me one thing for certain: President Obama and his advisors are not as smart as we have been led to believe.

In case you were not aware, Rush Limbaugh was part of a group who was going to buy the losing St. Louis Rams football franchise. What ensued was a defecation storm. Many newsmen, sports broadcasters and columnists began bringing up racist comments which they claimed that Limbaugh had made (one about slavery being a good thing and another about him praising James Earl Ray, the assassin of Martin Luther King Jr.). Turns out that he never made such comments. These came from a book which had no evidence for these comments; and from Wikipedia, where pretty much anyone can post anything they want, as long as it does not have too much of a conservative bias.

Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson also chimed in to make a ruckus about this, and the media always gives them weight in matters of a racial nature, despite the racial slurs they have each uttered and despite their less than stellar backgrounds.

DeMaurice Smith, executive direction of the NFL Players Association, sent out an email to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell as well as to players to get them to publically oppose Limbaugh. Also, Smith worked on Obama’s transition team and he also worked for Attorney General Eric Holder. Interesting.

Somehow, Rush Limbaugh’s name was leaked as one of the buyers for the St. Louis Rams. Almost immediately after, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson Jr. began to raise a stink over it; as did Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee (on the floor of Congress, no less). This story found its way into newspapers and on several news stations, where anywhere from 2–4 false quotations were given. Now, the reporters may have say, “Rush Limbaugh is reported to have said...” or “Limbaugh allegedly said...” but the end result is, most of the viewers believe that is what he said. Most of these news services never bothered to call the Limbaugh office to find out if he actually said these things. Can you imagine any news service running some story like, “Bill Clinton allegedly said, ‘I really don’t care much for Black people’” without doing some extensive research? Of course not.

Instead of doing any real research, CNN ran with this story, putting up Limbaugh’s mug next to the fake quotations.

The most fascinating segment I saw on this was, O’Reilly interviewed Juan Williams (a reasonable, moderate liberal) and Warren Ballentine (a very liberal guy). When Juan supported Limbaugh (even though their politics are quite different), Ballentine said, “Okay, you can go back to the porch, Juan,” which is a racial slur. The whole tenor of this debate was amazing: Ballentine disparaged Rush for his divisive and racial statements, and, when Juan disagreed with him, used a racial slur against Juan. I would say something here about that is the pot calling the kettle black, but that might be interpreted as a racial slur.

The closest thing to a racial slur that Limbaugh clearly made was, he claimed that the media presented a highly favorable opinion of Donovan McNabb because they wanted a Black quarterback to succeed. This was Limbaugh’s opinion of press coverage of McNabb, as well as Limbaugh indicating that McNabb was not as good a quarterback as the press made him out to be. In the past presidential election, we saw how fawning coverage was given to candidate Obama by almost all media outlets. Only FoxNews presented a roughly 50-50 news coverage on Obama (about half their stories with a clear slant were in favor of Obama and half were not in favor of Obama—a far cry from the Alphabet News organizations out there).

Juan, guest-hosting the factor, discusses this off-the-cuff remark here, along with an excellent discussion with a former NFL player Ken Hutcherson and Tammy Bruce. Although I did not get why Tammy Bruce was there, she made some salient points. Juan makes some statements here which are quite provocative, but not yet backed up (he suggests that this controversy could go as high up as the Obama administration).

Bear in mind, this included a USA Today columnist, several live reports on CNN and MSNBC, emails from the head of the NFL players union, and bloviating by Al Sharpton, Jessie Jackson Jr., and Sheila Jackson Lee—and not one of them bothered to substantiate the quotations which they used. They can always come back and say, “Sorry” but the damage was done, and there will be millions of people left with the notion that Rush Limbaugh actually made those statements. FoxNews, Newsbusters and the WSJ approached this story as journalists ought to, trying to determine what the actual truth is.

It should not matter whether you love or hate Rush Limbaugh, or if you are so liberal, you want us to become communistic tomorrow; you ought to depend upon news services which make an attempt to get the story right the first time.

The plot thickens on the media's character-lynching of Rush Limbaugh. Of the four stories run on ESPN.com about Limbaugh's bid for the Rams (October 6, October 12, October 15, and another October 15) none of them mention that NFL Players Association Executive Director DeMaurice Smith served as counsel to Attorney General Eric Holder and was a member of Barack Obama's transition team.

The October 12 article references Smith's anti-Limbaugh email meant to garner opposition against the radio host's bid. The report refers to Smith only as the executive director of the NFLPA. Despite the fact that Smith's opposition was based on Limbaugh's political commentary, the report failed to mention that Smith's political connections (including those to whom he donated thousands of dollars) have a vested interest in Limbaugh's discrediting.

The October 15 article (the last of four listed above) is decidedly negative toward Limbaugh, portraying him as paranoid about Obama's involvement in the decision. The report states:

Limbaugh blamed Smith, executive director of the NFLPA and an "Obama-ite," along with Sharpton and Jackson, whom he referred to as "race hustlers," for Checketts' decision to drop him. He said his sacking was an example of the political clout wielded by President Barack Obama's administration.

There is no mention in the piece of Smith's relationship with Holder or his work on the Obama transition.

It is not as if ESPN didn't know of Smith's history. The sports web site ran a report in July which stated:

In selecting Smith this year, the union chose Washington smarts over football experience. Smith, a Washington lawyer, served on the Obama transition team and also worked for Eric Holder before Holder became attorney general.

Smith's gross conflict of interest and apparent political targeting of Obama's top foe is a huge story. Unfortunately the media appears too blinded by their prejudice of Limbaugh to report on it.

To summarize, we know that a former Obama official and political ally--who was chosen by the NFLPA specifically for his political clout and connections to the highest rungs of power in government--directly attacked Limbaugh for the radio-talker's political commentary.

Historically politicians have been prone to vindictive and petty behavior, but never in American history has someone had so much power to pummel his political opponents as President Obama. With control over banks, insurance companies, car companies, media (sports media included) and unions (like the NFL players union), Obama tentacles seem to penetrate into nearly every corner of the nation.

1) There will be transparency in the law-making process. For the past month, the Senate Finance Committee has been debating health care. But, much to the surprise of many Americans, they haven't been debating an actual bill. They have been debating and amending a 262-page description of health care reform. It's essentially a summary of what liberals want the bill to look like, and no member of the Committee, or the public, has seen actual legislation. The legislation will likely not be available until the bill is debated on the floor.

2) The bill won't add a dime to the deficit. Since the Senate bill is yet to be written, there are no official cost estimates. However, initial estimates of a description of the bill (which is what the Finance Committee has been debating) by the Congressional Budget Office indicate the gross cost will be $829 billion. Independent analysis by The Lewin Group, a highly respected health care policy and management consulting firm, expects the House bill to run a $39 billion deficit in the first decade, and a $1 trillion deficit in the second decade.

3) If you like the coverage you have you can keep it. Liberals in Congress continue to demand the inclusion of a public plan, a new government run health plan to "compete" against private health insurance plans. The Lewin Group calculated the impact the House bill's public plan would have on existing health insurance coverage. It found with a public plan:

* 56 percent of Americans with employer-based coverage would lose their current coverage with the addition of a public plan.

* Of the estimated 172.5 million people with private health insurance, there would be a decline of 83.4 million people with private coverage

4) The bill won't cut benefits for seniors. It is impossible to cut payments to Medicare Advantage plans without cutting benefits. The Congressional Budget Office director testified that Medicare benefits will be cut, meaning seniors' private options for their health care needs are at risk.

5) The bill won't raise taxes on those earning less than $250,000. Provisions in the House and Senate bill would lead to a tax increase regardless of income. In fact, of the folks hit by the House's plans steep tax hikes, more than half fall in the bottom 60 percent of the income scale. Small businesses and low-income workers would be especially hit. In the Senate Finance Committee, amendments were offered that would have protected those below $250,000, and each one failed.

6) It will save American families $2500 a year. There has been no analysis to show that these bills would deliver these promised savings. In fact, mandates in the current bills would have the opposite effect, forcing many individuals to pay more money out-of-pocket, and compelling businesses to reduce wages, salaries, and job opportunities.

7) The government plan won't cover abortions or illegal immigrants. Amendments were offered in the House and Senate Committee mark-ups to clarify that abortion services would not be included and to ensure proper identification of citizenship were used in determining eligibility. Each of these amendments failed.

I would like to lend some perspective to the tarnished image that our former president, George Bush, has earned in the international community, which the lefties so love to gloat about. The recent award of the Nobel Prize to Obama is the last in a litany of disgraceful slanders against that decent man.

The true reason why Mr. Bush is so universally hated is because his own government, led by the left, conducted a successful campaign of slurs for his entire term in office. Their relentless lies and innuendo had the effect of convincing the world, as well as our own People, that George Bush was a maniacal demon, bent on war and destruction, and was an arrogant and swaggering tyrant.

In reality Mr. Bush inherited a conflict, two conflicts, which demanded of him a stern and unrelenting countenance. He was compelled to assume such a role. As Commander in Chief he did what I consider to be an admirable job, and while I take strong exception to Mr. Bush's domestic policies, on that one count his conduct was impeccable, above reproach.

By contrast the presidents I served under while deployed overseas were fools, and one of them, Richard Nixon, was a scurrilous coward, who for fear of the Chinese ran from Vietnam like a whipped dog. He cast a shadow of shame across the lives of every man who participated in that war. I won't dwell on that tragic episode, except to say that George Bush was an amazing contrast. He steadfastly refused to air his deeply felt convictions, which must surely have nagged at him, telling him that the charges of the left were true....he made a terrible mistake to invade Iraq.

Perhaps the intelligence was faulty, and it may indeed have been a grave error, but to his credit President Bush never opened his mouth, for which he was also excoriated constantly. For this he was charged with arrogance.

Not that my words will mean anything to those who continue to slander him to this day, but I can speak for the men and women who served under the Honorable George Bush. Had he admitted that we screwed up, it would have devastated the morale of our military in harm's way. It would have struck a fatal blow to our fight against a determined enemy. Imagine if you will, you are fighting to survive, hanging desperately to life, and your Supreme Commander blurts out that you are there BECAUSE OF A MISTAKE!!!!

The American People demonstrated a dismal lack of understanding for his responsibility as Commander In Chief. He was not at liberty to express his personal views. Every word that emanated from his mouth had to take the wellbeing of our military into consideration, what impact his words would have on them.

I can only say that I would have proudly acknowledged Mr. Bush as my Commander, and I would defend him vigorously. He has nothing to be ashamed of, popular rumor aside. I know that those who document our history in future years, men and women who are objective, and free of the bias that the liberals in this country keep at a fever pitch, George Bush will be given credit for his noble service. He consistently displayed pride in his country, and stood, unmoved, for the cause of freedom across the world.

Mr. Bush is a devout Christian, which no doubt explains why the invective against him has been so inflammatory. We should pray for his peace of mind, and a contented life in retirement. We shall have to wait and see, but now that Satan's man is at the helm, only time will reveal how well he fares in the court of public opinion.

"[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs." -- From a letter signed by Joe Lieberman, Dianne Feinstein, Barbara A. Milulski, Tom Daschle, & John Kerry among others on October 9, 1998

"This December will mark three years since United Nations inspectors last visited Iraq. There is no doubt that since that time, Saddam Hussein has reinvigorated his weapons programs. Reports indicate that biological, chemical and nuclear programs continue apace and may be back to pre-Gulf War status. In addition, Saddam continues to refine delivery systems and is doubtless using the cover of a licit missile program to develop longer- range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies." -- From a December 6, 2001 letter signed by Bob Graham, Joe Lieberman, Harold Ford, & Tom Lantos among others

"Saddam's goal ... is to achieve the lifting of U.N. sanctions while retaining and enhancing Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs. We cannot, we must not and we will not let him succeed." -- Madeline Albright, 1998

"(Saddam) will rebuild his arsenal of weapons of mass destruction and some day, some way, I am certain he will use that arsenal again, as he has 10 times since 1983" -- National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, Feb 18, 1998

"There's no question that Saddam Hussein is a threat... Yes, he has chemical and biological weapons. He's had those for a long time. But the United States right now is on a very much different defensive posture than we were before September 11th of 2001... He is, as far as we know, actively pursuing nuclear capabilities, though he doesn't have nuclear warheads yet. If he were to acquire nuclear weapons, I think our friends in the region would face greatly increased risks as would we." -- Wesley Clark on September 26, 2002

"The community of nations may see more and more of the very kind of threat Iraq poses now: a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction, ready to use them or provide them to terrorists. If we fail to respond today, Saddam and all those who would follow in his footsteps will be emboldened tomorrow." -- Bill Clinton in 1998

"In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members, though there is apparently no evidence of his involvement in the terrible events of September 11, 2001. It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons. Should he succeed in that endeavor, he could alter the political and security landscape of the Middle East, which as we know all too well affects American security." -- Hillary Clinton, October 10, 2002

"I am absolutely convinced that there are weapons...I saw evidence back in 1998 when we would see the inspectors being barred from gaining entry into a warehouse for three hours with trucks rolling up and then moving those trucks out." -- Clinton's Secretary of Defense William Cohen in April of 2003

"Iraq is not the only nation in the world to possess weapons of mass destruction, but it is the only nation with a leader who has used them against his own people." -- Tom Daschle in 1998

"Saddam Hussein's regime represents a grave threat to America and our allies, including our vital ally, Israel. For more than two decades, Saddam Hussein has sought weapons of mass destruction through every available means. We know that he has chemical and biological weapons. He has already used them against his neighbors and his own people, and is trying to build more. We know that he is doing everything he can to build nuclear weapons, and we know that each day he gets closer to achieving that goal." -- John Edwards, Oct 10, 2002

"The debate over Iraq is not about politics. It is about national security. It should be clear that our national security requires Congress to send a clear message to Iraq and the world: America is united in its determination to eliminate forever the threat of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction." -- John Edwards, Oct 10, 2002

"Iraq does pose a serious threat to the stability of the Persian Gulf and we should organize an international coalition to eliminate his access to weapons of mass destruction. Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to completely deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power." -- Al Gore, 2002

"We are in possession of what I think to be compelling evidence that Saddam Hussein has, and has had for a number of years, a developing capacity for the production and storage of weapons of mass destruction." -- Bob Graham, December 2002

"We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction." -- Ted Kennedy, September 27, 2002

"There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein's regime is a serious danger, that he is a tyrant, and that his pursuit of lethal weapons of mass destruction cannot be tolerated. He must be disarmed." -- Ted Kennedy, Sept 27, 2002

"I will be voting to give the president of the United States the authority to use force - if necessary - to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security." -- John F. Kerry, Oct 2002

"The threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real, but as I said, it is not new. It has been with us since the end of that war, and particularly in the last 4 years we know after Operation Desert Fox failed to force him to reaccept them, that he has continued to build those weapons. He has had a free hand for 4 years to reconstitute these weapons, allowing the world, during the interval, to lose the focus we had on weapons of mass destruction and the issue of proliferation." -- John Kerry, October 9, 2002

"Over the years, Iraq has worked to develop nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. During 1991 - 1994, despite Iraq's denials, U.N. inspectors discovered and dismantled a large network of nuclear facilities that Iraq was using to develop nuclear weapons. Various reports indicate that Iraq is still actively pursuing nuclear weapons capability. There is no reason to think otherwise. Beyond nuclear weapons, Iraq has actively pursued biological and chemical weapons.U.N. inspectors have said that Iraq's claims about biological weapons is neither credible nor verifiable. In 1986, Iraq used chemical weapons against Iran, and later, against its own Kurdish population. While weapons inspections have been successful in the past, there have been no inspections since the end of 1998. There can be no doubt that Iraq has continued to pursue its goal of obtaining weapons of mass destruction." -- Patty Murray, October 9, 2002

"As a member of the House Intelligence Committee, I am keenly aware that the proliferation of chemical and biological weapons is an issue of grave importance to all nations. Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process." -- Nancy Pelosi, December 16, 1998

"Even today, Iraq is not nearly disarmed. Based on highly credible intelligence, UNSCOM [the U.N. weapons inspectors] suspects that Iraq still has biological agents like anthrax, botulinum toxin, and clostridium perfringens in sufficient quantity to fill several dozen bombs and ballistic missile warheads, as well as the means to continue manufacturing these deadly agents. Iraq probably retains several tons of the highly toxic VX substance, as well as sarin nerve gas and mustard gas. This agent is stored in artillery shells, bombs, and ballistic missile warheads. And Iraq retains significant dual-use industrial infrastructure that can be used to rapidly reconstitute large-scale chemical weapons production." -- Ex-Un Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter in 1998

"There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years. And that may happen sooner if he can obtain access to enriched uranium from foreign sources -- something that is not that difficult in the current world. We also should remember we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction." -- John Rockefeller, Oct 10, 2002

"Saddam's existing biological and chemical weapons capabilities pose a very real threat to America, now. Saddam has used chemical weapons before, both against Iraq's enemies and against his own people. He is working to develop delivery systems like missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles that could bring these deadly weapons against U.S. forces and U.S. facilities in the Middle East." -- John Rockefeller, Oct 10, 2002

"Whether one agrees or disagrees with the Administration's policy towards Iraq, I don't think there can be any question about Saddam's conduct. He has systematically violated, over the course of the past 11 years, every significant UN resolution that has demanded that he disarm and destroy his chemical and biological weapons, and any nuclear capacity. This he has refused to do. He lies and cheats; he snubs the mandate and authority of international weapons inspectors; and he games the system to keep buying time against enforcement of the just and legitimate demands of the United Nations, the Security Council, the United States and our allies. Those are simply the facts." -- Henry Waxman, Oct 10, 2002

From Aaron from a website/discussion group I frequent (this sounds like an email forward):

If a conservative sees a foreign threat, he thinks about how to defeat his enemy.

If a liberal is homosexual, he demands everyone know it & legislative legitimacy.

If a black man or Hispanic are conservative, they see themselves as independently successful.

Their liberal counterparts see themselves as victims in need of government protection.

If a conservative decides he needs health care, he goes about shopping for it, or may choose a job that provides it.

If a conservative slips and falls in a store, he gets up, laughs and is embarrassed.

If a liberal slips and falls, he grabs his neck, moans like he's in labor and then sues.

If a conservative reads this, he'll forward it so his friends can have a good laugh.

A major new report confirms the worst fears of many: Health care reform will raise the costs for most Americans-by about 18% on average. That is on top of existing inflation of health coverage.

Once the plan is fully phased-in (by 2019), a typical family of four would pay an extra $4,000 each year.

When combined with existing inflation, costs would rise from today's $12,300 annual average to $25,900. Of that 111% increase, $9,600 is due to existing factors uncorrected by the legislation, and $4,000 due to additional costs created by the legislation.

For single persons, the differential is projected at $1,500 a year. Premiums would rise from today's $4,600 a year to $9,600 overall.

Prepared by Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC), the new analysis was requested by AHIP-America's Health Insurance Plans. It focuses on the leading plan pending in Congress, sponsored by Sen. Max Baucus (D, MT), which is scheduled for a Senate Finance Committee vote on Tuesday. The PWC report can be read here.

The PWC projections track what The Heritage Foundation and many others have said about the legislation: It does not save money. It simply taxes those who have health coverage and uses the money to give care to others.

The White House is said to be livid. After all, President Obama's claims that he makes care more affordable are exposed as a myth by the new study. Lawmakers claim the bill would "save" money, but that's not true for those who have insurance. The only "savings" would be to those who receive government-paid health care and subsidies at the cost of higher prices for everyone else. (Even if the legislation "reduced the deficit", it would do so by making citizens pay more, not by controlling government spending.)

Despite the enormous costs, estimates say 25-million people would remain uninsured under the Baucus bill. The new study also criticizes the Baucus plan for not placing tougher mandates and penalties on those who do not buy health insurance, which would help spread the costs (and create new customers for insurers). PWC reports higher costs would occur due to these parts of the bill:

* Reduction in Medicare payments, which care providers would offset by raising rates on their other patients.

The report will be denounced as a political attack by the insurance industry. But the real attack is Washington's assault on our pocketbooks and our freedoms.

Late Wednesday, Rush Limbaugh was bounced out of contention to buy into a pro football team. That happened because various people, like Al Sharpton, put forth that Mr. Limbaugh had made a series of racial comments and thus did not deserve to be part of the National Football League. That race theme quickly became a hammer used against Limbaugh:

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't see him as much as a racist, as he makes racial remarks, but I see him more as a bigot. And a bigot is someone who, regardless of the facts in evidence in front of them, they still go their own way.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All I know is about what I read about Rush Limbaugh. But I do know what he talks about and the line that he tries to play. It's an easy line to play. It's a race line.

So what's the evidence that Limbaugh is a race-baiter? We investigated the statements that are being tossed about.

The first one allegedly has Mr. Limbaugh praising James Earl Ray, convicted of assassinating Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. There is no evidence Rush Limbaugh ever did that. The accusation comes from a far-left guy named Jack Huberman, who provided no evidence to back up the claim.

Huberman is also the source for Limbaugh's alleged quote saying slavery was not entirely bad. Again, Huberman provided no back up. The allegation was also published on Wikipedia without any sourcing.

Finally, a Kansas City Star columnist named James Fussell quoted Limbaugh as saying bad things about the NAACP. The quote came from a newsletter called "Flush Rush," but so far there is no confirmation that the disparaging remarks were ever made.

So what we have here are accusations without merit, but in our hype-media age that's enough to paint someone as a racist.

I've been through this. A couple of years ago I said on the radio that having dinner in Harlem was the same as having dinner anywhere in America. The context was my grandmother, who was very afraid of blacks even though she never even met a black person. Her fear was irrational, and I made that point quite clearly.

But the vicious Web site Media Matters put forth that I was denigrating a black-owned restaurant, and some people believed it without even listening to the radio broadcast, which I posted on BillOReilly.com.

Fair-minded Americans know that playing the race card is easy and hateful. The only thing we can find about Rush Limbaugh is that he thinks quarterback Donovan McNabb is overrated by some people who want black quarterbacks to succeed. Mr. McNabb resented the remark, as he should have. He's a good player and his color has nothing to do with his performance. I think Limbaugh made a mistake with that analysis, but that doesn't make him a racist and should not disqualify him from owning part of a team.

Here's the no spin truth: If the European countries in NATO would supply combat troops to Afghanistan, that conflict would be over and the good guys would be victorious.

On Wednesday, Great Britain announced it is sending 500 more troops, but things are bleak on the continent. Only Holland and Denmark allow their soldiers to aggressively fight. Other countries like France, Italy and Germany do very little to defeat the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

Of course, that makes no sense, but that's reality. No matter how popular Barack Obama is in Europe, we get very little help from those nations.

On Wednesday, our pal Vlad Putin announced he's against sanctions on Iran. He doesn't want to join with America, Britain and France and challenge Iran's nuclear weapons program by imposing economic penalties.

Vlad, a former KGB guy, says it's too soon and he doesn't want to frighten the mullahs. Of course that's insane, but it's consistent. Putin has been supplying Iran with military hardware, including missile components, for years. He does this to make life difficult for America and to pocket more than a few dollars himself.

So that's what President Obama is up against and there doesn't seem to be any reasoning with Europe and Putin. However, rather than being upfront with the American people, the Obama administration continues to live in Never-Neverland:

HILLARY CLINTON, SECRETAY OF STATE: I'm very pleased by how supportive the Russians have been in what has become a united international effort. We remain committed to preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear weapons power. Everybody hopes this succeeds, but we're also going to continue to look at the potential sanctions if we're not successful.

Please. If Hillary Clinton is very pleased that Putin has publicly shot down sanctions, then it is all over. Iran will get nukes.

Secretary Clinton visited Russia to try and talk some sense into those people but their agenda is giving the USA a hard time, not protecting the world from crazy jihadists bent on getting nuclear weapons.

For years, Putin has been arming the worst elements on Earth, thumbing his nose first at President Bush, now at President Obama.

Many folks overseas despised President Bush because he acted without the world's approval. President Obama has vowed to change that philosophy. How's it going so far?

This is quite fascinating: 1000's of people in San Francisco protest President Obama while he was at a fundraiser. Although most of these people were conservatives, there were many hyper-liberals there as well.

Michelle Bachman’s letter to the Honorable Sheila Bair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC):

Chris Matthews talks about someone jamming a CO₂ pellet in Rush Limbaugh’s head; with video:

Russell Simmons’s “Indictment of a Nation.” When Michael Medved read this on the air, there were violins playing in the background.

RUSH: Now, ladies and gentlemen, the Official Obama Criticizer, Bo Snerdley, asked me yesterday if he could enter this fray. His theory is that he is Certified Black Enough to legitimately and without criticism criticize Obama. And he would like to say some words about this NFL episode. So without any further delay, here is Mr. Bo Snerdley, the Official Obama Criticizer here on the EIB Network.

SNERDLEY: This is Bo Snerdley, Official Obama Criticizer for the EIB Network. Certified Black Enough to criticize with 100% organic slave blood. Today, Obama isn't the issue. This is the special sports edition. And I have a statement: "My fellow Americans, this week, a racial spectacle has been played out which is nothing less than disgraceful." You know what? Screw this! We're going to the translation right now, only this time it's not a translation for the EIB brothers and sisters in the 'hood, it's a translation to the 'hood. Yo, my fellow homeys, especially those of you who play in the NFL: Every single one of you who shouted out against Rush, check yourself, dog. You got played, okay? Rush ain't your problem, yo. He never was your problem. He never will be your problem. Twenty years, man! For 20 years Rush has been telling everybody: You brothers in the NFL deserve to get paid.

The NFL and every other sports league there is got a break it off to you because you the best, right? The owners they got to break it off to you, give up your props, give you your props. Any of you fools know that, yo? No. Instead you get all puffed up behind some Obama flackie, jump on TV, start mouthing off about "Rush said this! Rush said that! Slavery this, slavery that," whatever, whatever. It was all made up, yo! Some of these clown reporters on TV who fed all the stuff to you, yo, you know what they doing now? They are out here trying to apologize quietly so they don't get their asses sued, yo! Check that out. Y'all got played. So here's your question for you brothers, especially some of y'all in the NFL. Y'all going to man up? Y'all going to man and up say, "Hey, we got played man. We kinda sorry. Oops, we didn't know."

Okay, now, let me -- while I'm -- yo, let me get this off, okay? McNabb. Can we just do this one more time? Square up. Even if Rush said what y'all thought he said, which he didn't say, what's the biggie? Y'all thought he said that McNabb wasn't all that and was getting props because people wanted a black guy to succeed at quarterback. So what? So what? Don't y'all want to see a black quarterback make it, yo? I do. So the sports media guys, he said they want him to succeed, what's the big deal? Is there a problem here, yo? And McNabb? You a punk, yo. Now, my NFL brothers, let me ask you a question here. Who was it that whipped Michael Vick a new one after he got done in the joint?

Was it Rush? Nope. It was a bunch of your white liberal sportswriter guys pretending they loved their dogs more than they loved their wives, okay? That's who ripped all over Michael Vick. Who's been ripping Plaxico, who's been ripping Pacman? Every time y'all get going... Who was it that ran T.O. on up out of Dallas, yo? Okay, was it Rush? No. Okay? Now for all of you homeys, this is outside the NFL. For all my brothers and sisters, y'all want to get pissed off about somebody insulting black people? Why don't y'all watch BET, Black "Exploitation" Television, okay? You want to know who's calling black women, "Bitches ho this, bitches ho that"? Is it Rush Limbaugh? No. Who's telling y'all that all you can do is jiggle your butts on TV? Is it Rush Limbaugh? Rush ain't your enemy, yo. You know what the biggest threat to black men is in America, yo?

It ain't Rush Limbaugh. It's other black men who are killing off brothers like they did that young boy out in Chicago, okay? A quarter of our brothers don't even make it to be age 25 'cause they get shot up by other black men. Is Rush out there pulling the trigger? No. And y'all brothers, you got anything to say about it? Especially y'all in the NFL. Y'all get paid, y'all leave the hood, that's that. Not a word. Okay? Now, for all of y'all who live deep in the hood, I got another question: Is it Rush Limbaugh stopping your kids from being educated in your run-down schools, in your run-down-ass neighborhoods? No. Who is it? And where's Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson on that instead of flapping their mouth about all this other stuff that they don't know anything else about? How come Al, Jesse, and y'all are living large and the 'hood is still the 'hood? That concludes my statement.

MATT LAUER: Now to the first part of our exclusive interview with controversial conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh. Normally he does not like to give interviews, but he agreed to sit down with Today's national correspondent, Jamie Gangel, who can be very persuasive. Jamie, good morning to you.

JAMIE GANGEL: Good morning, Matt. Fan or critic, Rush has become more than just the number one radio talk show host in the country. He is considered an influential political player, from his attacks on President Obama to Democrats who call him "the leader of the Republican Party." So we started by asking him, just how powerful does he think he is?

RUSH: I am not the leader of the Republican Party. I don't want to be the leader of the Republican Party. These people think that they can discredit the Republican Party by making me the head of it. All they're doing is elevating me. It's silly for them to keep talking about how I'm the leader of anything. It's just creating more curiosity about me. It's twenty-one years, more popular than ever. Lord, thank you for my enemies.

RUSH ARCHIVE: Barack Obama has the inside track on becoming the worst president in the nation's history.

RUSH: Obama gives speeches trashing his own country. And he gets a prize for it. This is a greater embarrassment than losing the Olympics bid was.

JAMIE GANGEL: (dramatic music) But sometimes it's been his personal life. Married and divorced three times, in 2001 he lost his hearing and now wears cochlear implants. He publicly struggled with an addiction to prescription painkillers and went through rehab.

RUSH ARCHIVE: Following this broadcast, I will check myself into a treatment center for the next 30 days.

JAMIE GANGEL: But these days, Rush is happily dating, has lost 85 pounds -- and, oh, by the way, he recently signed a new contract reported to be worth $400 million. It's good to be Rush.

RUSH: I'm 58 now, and I can tell you that every year has been better than the year before.

JAMIE GANGEL: (sad music) But the road to success wasn't easy. Raised in a small town in Missouri, the son of a prominent family of lawyers and judges, Rush did not fit in.

RUSH: I started being interested in radio when I was eight years old because I hated school. Second grade, whatever it was, I despised it. It was prison. I wanted to be like that guy. I wanted to be the guy on the radio having fun.

JAMIE GANGEL: His father didn't approve, forced him to go to college. After a year, Rush dropped out and then bounced from job to job.

JAMIE GANGEL: (bouncy music) Finally in 1988, he got his break, and ever since it's been "the world according to Rush." Three hours a day holding forth...

RUSH ARCHIVE: For all of these, years the feminazis have been beating up women in this country.

JAMIE GANGEL: Of course, these days his favorite target is the president of the United States.

RUSH ARCHIVE: America will once again succeed when Obama admits his policies and his arrogance have failed.

JAMIE GANGEL: Beyond politics, were you moved in any way to see an African-American elected president?

RUSH: Yeah, but I got over it very quickly. I mean, he's president of the United States. His skin color doesn't matter to me. His policies are what matter. The idea that we've had a very historic thing was wonderful when it happened, absolutely. But I'll be honest with you. I predicted to you it was going to exacerbate racial problems, and it has. Any criticism of President Obama is going to be said to be oriented in racism. And if you don't like his health care bill, it's racist. I opposed when Clinton and Hillary were trying to do it, and they aren't black. It's all about ideas. I think these are dark days for the country. I think his economic policies are... I think he is shepherding the decline; he's not observing it.

RUSH: (long pause) Hmmm. (scratching his chin) Maybe. I can't think of it, but, let's see.

RUSH: Great, great voice. Reads a teleprompter like no one I've ever seen read a teleprompter. I am dazzled by that.

JAMIE GANGEL: Right. And then just recently, again, when you were gloating that Chicago didn't get the Olympics.

RUSH ARCHIVE: Oh, man, oh, man, oh, man! The worst day of Obama's presidency, folks. The ego has landed.

RUSH: Who are impotent and powerless, yet they... It's like shooting a battleship with BBs, but go ahead. Tell me what they're saying.

RUSH: Trust me, Jamie. Every one of these "critics" knew and knows exactly what I meant. They are taking this as yet another opportunity to say, "Whoa! Limbaugh wants America to fail!" and that's such BS. I want this country to succeed, and it won't happen if he succeeds with his agenda. So perhaps a more politically correct way to say this: "I want health care under Obama to fail. I don't want Obama owning automobile companies. I don't want him running Wall Street and setting compensation levels."

RUSH: When I now say "I hope he fails"' it's to tweak the media. I know how to do it. I know how to yank their chain. I know how to send them into insanity. I know how to make them spend the next two days talking about me.

JAMIE GANGEL: (Banking Queen parody song) Rush's brand of satire also keeps everyone talking. Parodies like this one of liberal congressman Barney Frank, who also happens to be gay.

JAMIE GANGEL: ("Barack the 'Magic Negro'" parody song) And this one about race and candidate Barack Obama.

JAMIE GANGEL: Rush says it was inspired by a column in the LA Times written by an African-American.

AL SHARPTON IMPRESSIONIST: The LA Times they call him that 'cause he's black not authentically.

JAMIE GANGEL: Critics say they are offensive. Rush is unrepentant. (Returns to Rush) You know it's going to elicit a strong reaction, and you know --

JAMIE GANGEL: When your critics say these things are racist or they're homophobic --

RUSH: Do I think I ever cross a line? Yeah, probably. Look 15 hours a week, no script, no guests, some phone calls thrown in. Anybody who does that is going to say some things, "Oh, wish I hadn't said that," but you just come back and apologize for it.

JAMIE GANGEL: But these days, some of Rush's biggest critics are other Republicans. Someone recently called you kryptonite for the Republican Party, that if Rush Limbaugh defines the Republican Party and politics, moderate Republicans say they will never be able to attract the moderates, the independents, the women to win national election.

RUSH: Oh, you're through? The Republican Party nominated the ideal, the perfect Mr. Republican Candidate in 2008, John McCain. He was the guy that was going to go get the moderates; he was going to get the independents; he was going to walk across the aisle; he could work with the Democrats. The Republicans got shellacked. The Republican Party is not a party of liberal, independent moderates. The Republican Party wins when it is unabashedly conservative. And it's going to continue to lose. It's going to continue to lose until it realizes that.

JAMIE GANGEL: You do scare Republican politicians. I mean, GOP Party Chairman Michael Steele, at his peril, he criticized you, he said you were just an entertainer --

RUSH: Well, you know, you'd have to ask him why he apologized, but the reason I went after him is not because he said those things about me. It's because he's off message. Michael Steele should be out there raising money and planning on ways to get people to vote for Republicans.

JAMIE GANGEL: Should a radio talk show host have that much power? Is that a good thing?

RUSH: Well, I dispute that there's that much power. But I'll accept the premise of your question in order to give you an answer. Should a talk show host have that kind of power? I believe in the free market. And if the free market creates that, with my participation in it, then it is what it is.

JAMIE GANGEL: But off camera you are polite, you are courteous, you have old-fashioned manners.

JAMIE GANGEL: How much of what you say is entertainment and how much do you believe?

RUSH: Well, I believe everything. But there's satire. One thing I do that you won't find anywhere else in the media, I combine two different elements: satire, irreverent humor with serious commentary. I go back and forth within a moment's notice. I'm not controversial. Everybody that listens to me agrees with me.

RUSH: No. I'm not controversial, bombastic, outrageous. You know what? I think that's just a factor of political correctness. I do not allow myself to be constrained by people saying, "You can't say that." So I say nothing that's shocking or surprising; it's just nobody else has the courage to say it anymore because they're afraid that they'll offend somebody. I don't have those fears. I'm a communicator. I'm a broadcaster.

JAMIE GANGEL: And, Matt, that's just the beginning. Tomorrow, Rush unleashed. He talks about his personal life, why he says his addiction to painkillers was the best thing that ever happened to him. And, in his usual blunt style, he's gonna tell us what he really thinks of everyone, from Hillary Clinton to Sarah Palin to Glenn Beck, former presidents Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush. And a special guest dropped by during the interview, someone who sounds an awful lot like former President Bill Clinton. Take a look.

RUSH: (doing Bill Clinton impression) I hear Bill Clinton's name and I can't help it, I just start channeling the guy, and I can't -- look, do you realize how quick and shafty I am, Jamie? The Democrat Party's going to be really, really sad when I'm gone, because I'm the glue holding 'em together. I mean -- I mean I'm wealthy, I sold a lot of books, I tell people I'm rich all the time, how my tax rate is, and I still scored two million bucks from that stimulus plan that was supposed to create jobs. Ha-ha. How clever am I?

JAMIE GANGEL: He is something else, Matt. He just jumps out of the screen. Matt?

MATT LAUER: He's fascinating, there's no question about it. It was a great interview Jamie, thanks --

MATT LAUER: And now more of our rare and exclusive interview with conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh. This morning, his thoughts on his past addiction to painkillers and some of the most powerful names in politics. He sat down with Today national Correspondent Jamie Gangel. Jamie, good morning to you.

JAMIE GANGEL: Matt, good morning. Get ready. Here it is: What Rush really thinks about everyone, from Sarah Palin to Hillary Clinton, what he would say if President Obama invited him to the White House, and why he says his struggle with addiction is actually the best thing that ever happened to him. But we started by asking his thoughts on the next presidential race.

RUSH: I have no idea. I'm certainly not in charge of picking them. The only thing I could do is recite names from 2008 that probably want back in it: Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, Huckabee. Tim Pawlenty is probably going to go in.

RUSH: -- I'm not going to go out there now and destroy the chances of three or four other people.

RUSH: (sigh) Too soon to say, but I think it's entirely possible. But we do have Obama, and he's truly polarizing the country. So there will be a significant vote against, but you gotta have somebody to vote for at the same time.

RUSH: I'll be honest with him. I'd be... Look, the President of the United States is the President of the United States. He's my president, too. You know, I want this country to succeed. And if he invited me up there to chat, I would owe him the dignity and honor of being honest.

JAMIE GANGEL: We asked Rush to play word association. (on camera) I say, "President Obama." You say...?

RUSH: An utter disgrace and embarrassment. Sorry for the four words, but I needed them all.

RUSH: Well, no. Love? I admire her. People have tried to destroy her. She's got more of a backbone than any man in the Democrat Party.

RUSH: He's just the most decent, down-to-earth, real man you could ever hope to meet.

JAMIE GANGEL: Glenn Beck. (rolling Glenn Beck b-roll) Do you worry about the new guy on the block?

RUSH: No. In 1988, I'm the only national conservative voice. Now look at conservative media. Look what I have spawned. Glenn Beck to me is, "Right on, daddy-O!" Glenn Beck is the result of my success.

RUSH: (doing Clinton impression) (chuckles) You know, when I hear Bill Clinton's name, I can't help it. I just start channeling the guy --

RUSH: -- and I can't help it. Look, do you realize how quick and shafty I am, Jamie? Look at what I managed to pull. The Democrat Party is going to be really, really sad when I'm gone because I'm the glue holding 'em together. I mean, I'm wealthy, I sold a lot of books, I tell people I'm rich all the time, how high my tax rate is -- and I still scored two million bucks for that stimulus plan that was supposed to create jobs. Ha-ha-ha. How clever am I.

JAMIE GANGEL: (off camera) Chances of that White House invitation: Not likely. But President Obama has been good for Rush. His ratings are soaring.

RUSH: ARCHIVE: The more Obama makes himself known to the public, the more the public rejects what he is selling.

JAMIE GANGEL: And personally, he says he's never been happier. He's lost 85 pounds and talks freely about his past struggle with addiction to prescription painkillers. (on camera) Do you struggle with any of it anymore?

RUSH: -- which is odd, they say, but I haven't. I haven't had any. No struggles with it at all.

RUSH: You know, I actually thank God for my addiction, because I learned more about myself in rehab than I would have ever learned otherwise. There was a time where I desperately cared what people thought of me. Desperately.

RUSH: Not professionally. I always somehow knew that that didn't matter. But personally. When you're worried about what people think, you stop being who you are.

RUSH: And you start tailoring yourself to everybody else so that they'll like you.

JAMIE GANGEL: As you know, Matt, Rush is in the news this week because he wants to buy the St. Louis Rams. It's causing quite a bit of controversy from some of the players and his critics. But Rush says he is misunderstood and he will continue with the bid. Matt?

JAMIE GANGEL: You raised it on your show before (air quotes) "the critics" could raise it. You resigned from ESPN because of the comment about Donovan McNabb.

RUSH: Look. See, a lot of people ask, "Don't you just you want to apologize?" No. I said exactly what I meant, and if you want me to, I'll say it again. Let me paint the picture here for you. In the production meeting the day before, I hear what everybody is going to discuss. They're all wringing their hands, "What's wrong with McNabb?" And I said, "Guys, I don't think that much is wrong. He's just a little overrated. The defense has held the team together. I think McNabb is benefiting a little bit because of social consciousness in the media. The league wants black quarterbacks to do well." Bam! I do believe that there is a lot of social consciousness racism in the media, sports media especially.

RUSH: I think they're obsessed with it. And so I simply made that comment, but it was not critical of McNabb because he's black. Remember the production meetings: "What's wrong with McNabb?" I'm sitting there thinking, "He's not as good as you guys are making him out to be." That was the point of my comment.

JAMIE GANGEL: I assume you loved that job. If you had it to do over again, would you not have said that comment because --

JAMIE GANGEL: It has been announced that you will be a judge in the Miss America Pageant.

RUSH: A noted conservative sexist asked to come out and judge fifty-three women to see who is Miss America? Why, the world may stop spinning over this!

RUSH: Well, I grew up watching this pageant. The last thing I ever thought I would ever be is at it. They asked me to do it. I thought about it. You know it's a huge work commitment? They sent me the week-long itinerary from last year. The first free night is Thursday night.

RUSH: (laughing)Yeah, yeah, yeah. And people said, "This is going to be hilarious! You judging the evening gown competition?" But it sounds to me like it's going to be fun. You know, I've got myself in a really great place in life that few people ever get to, and it's another example of how blessed I am. I don't have to do very much anything I don't want to do anymore. Do you realize how many people will never be able to say that?

RUSH: I can do it if I want to, and I chose to. I just got a wild hare. I thought about it for two or three days and said, "You know what? I'm going to do it," and I know part of the fun of it is going to be it's on the heel of the news that came out about the football team, the Rams deal that I'm in. Then this hits. These critics of yours that you have mentioned, they're just going to go nuts because this is the kind of stuff they have been trying to make sure didn't happen to me! All this stuff is "the mainstreaming of Rush Limbaugh" from off this far-right-wing fringe they've tried to put me in. Here I am. I just keep tiptoeing into the mainstream, and it just irritates them, and I go, (arm pump) "Yeah!"

JAMIE GANGEL: (laugh) Considering you are rather famous for mocking feminists, the word 'feminazi' --

JAMIE GANGEL: -- comes to mind. I have to ask: Will you be a fair judge? Could...?

RUSH: If that's the way it comes down. The ideology of these people... I don't know. I've never done this, so I don't know if you learn much about that until we get to it. They're all going to say they want world peace, and they're all going to say they want an end to pestilence and so forth or something. I mean, that's --

JAMIE GANGEL: But you saw what happened last year with the gay marriage question.

RUSH: No, I'm not going to penalize somebody that does not agree with me. This is not the Miss America "Conservative" Pageant.

RUSH: Our culture is very odd. It's very forgiving of the worst... Look at this Letterman business.

RUSH: I look at it as a social commentator, and I just want to shake my head. I mean, it almost the... I'm thinking, "His wife is watching this." He didn't get around to apologizing to his wife, and to apologize to her on television? I mean, this was Oprah Winfrey show on steroids, and this is a comedy show. I thought, "He's out there admitting that he had sex with interns." I mean, you know, NBC, I'm sure, has a whole department that conducts annual seminars where employees are brought in and told, "This is what sexual harassment is and what it isn't, and you can't do it and so forth." I'm thinking, "This is all being applauded?" So the culture is very permissive.

RUSH: There aren't too many guardrails on the highway, so we're free to drive off the road now and then. His ratings went up. So it tells you that people are more curious than ever about media personalities and their personal lives. If you look at Twitter, Facebook, MySpace -- is that what it is? -- The people, young people in this country particularly obsessed with fame. Everybody wants everybody else to know who they are and what they're doing. They are willing to give up all of this privacy, and it's 15 minutes of TV, and, man, people's lives are made! Even if it's just a shot of them sitting in an audience. You know, it's interesting. I think it's going to have some fallout as these people get older and their privacy is gone, and everybody knows everything about them, and the snoops that have no good intent with the information they learn are going to be stealing their identities or...

RUSH: Now, see? Now there are probably people in media you'd ask that question to and they'd say, "Oh yeah! It was all me. I want you to think I have that kind of power and I want you to think I use that kind of power." I'm too big a realist. I couldn't have helped McCain no matter how much I wanted to. I couldn't hurt him more than he hurt himself. He's trying right now to "remake" the Republican Party. "We need to go out," he said, I saw him the other day, "and get candidates that are in my image." (claps hands) Well, that's great! Let's go out and find some more people who know how to lose!

JAMIE GANGEL: How much of what you say is about ideology and how much of it is about good business, that the more listeners you get the more your ratings go up?

RUSH: The two are inseparable. I mean, like I told you a moment ago: I'm not an actor. But let's face it. You know, radio is showbiz. This rap that I'm "just an entertainer" is a way that critics of mine try to discredit me. You'll note that nobody takes me on on my ideas. Nobody argues ideas. They always say, "God, look at what... Did you hear what he said? He's this, he's that, he's outrageous, he's bombastic" or whatever. Those are attempts to discredit me among people that don't listen to me. But the media didn't make me and they can't break me. I mean, they've been trying the same plays from their same playbook for twenty-one years as you mentioned. But radio is showbiz. There's a lot of noise out there. There's a lot of competition. You have to cut through it. And I love tweaking people: "Talent on loan from God!" There are actually people who think I'm saying that I'm God! That is thanking God for blessing me with the talent I do have "on loan," because someday I'm going to die. We are all going to die despite the Center for Science in the Public Interest trying to save us from leafy vegetables that contain poison. But we are all going to die. And so I simply take these elements of entertainment and seriousness and combine them. But if I were to walk in this room meeting you for the first time, I'd never say, "Hey, Rush Limbaugh here! Talent on loan from God! How are you?" I don't do that.

RUSH: Folks, also, I don't know what to do today. I really don't know what to do. The audio sound bite roster is, again, 95% about me. The reason for my indecision here is that -- well, I've talked to you about this before. People lob attacks at you and when you respond to them they think, a-ha, we've hit home runs here. There's so many outrageous, fabricated lies. There is a genuine full-fledged smear campaign being orchestrated by liberal sportswriters and picked up by other liberals in the State-Controlled Media that it's breathtaking. I'm used to being taken out of context, but we have sourced it, we have found where it was found, these fake, totally made up quotes attributed to me which are being repeated without any fact-checking at all by liberal sportswriters. The interesting thing about this to me is I think back to Tom Brokaw and Tom Friedman saying, "Oh, the Internet is a sewer. They need us, professional journalists with filters. The Internet is a sewer out there, you can read anything, people believe everything that's out there, Tom, and, yes, our professionalism, we're highly trained professionals, and only we have the ability to filter the stench that is the sewer of the Internet."

All right, fine. Only professional journalists have the ability to wander through the sewer and figure out what's valid and what isn't. So a bunch of professional journalists are believing everything in the sewer, they're not checking it at all, they're not fact-checking, they are embarrassing themselves, and the sound bite roster today is largely about this. I'm in a dilemma here over whether to waste valuable broadcast time talking about some of this. So I'm going to mix the two. We will mix the two as we always do, but I just want to warn you. As you people know, I'm very uncomfortable using this program to talk about myself. I've run a test, I take an average 45-minute segment of this show and compare the number of times I use the word "I" compared to the number of times Obama uses the word "I" in an average 45 minute speech and it's no contest. I mean I'm a piker compared to the personal pronoun usage of President Obama.

RUSH: Thomas in Kettering, Ohio, welcome to the EIB Network, sir. It's great to have you here.

CALLER: (static) I can't tell you what you've done for me in my life and how I raised my child and live my life. But about this NFL thing, Rush? It's almost like... I know we put a lot at your feet and you've fought the fight for us, but it's like, if you don't fight this, Rush, if you don't -- because we agree with you. We're not racists. We're not bigots. We're not homophobes. And this is a time where we need to stand up and with you our leader, no question about that and say, "No, no! I'm going to do this. I've worked hard for this and I'm going to get this." What do you think about that?

RUSH: Well, this is the dilemma that I admitted having when the program began. I've talked about this a bunch. Brief history. When I started this radio program in 1988, I had never been called a racist, a bigot, a sexist, a homophobe. People who knew me never thought that. It was ridiculous. But then I got on the radio as a conservative and all of a sudden I started being attacked as a racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe. And I didn't know what to do about it. It had never happened, and there was nobody that could give me any guidance. I just got a bunch of advice and there are basically two pieces of advice I got. "Rush, you gotta hit back! You can't let people make those claims about you and try to ruin your reputation and smear you. You gotta fight back on that!"

So I would take that advice and I would respond to it, and the critics would just (rubbing hands together) laugh with glee, "A-ha! We must have hit a home run. Limbaugh's upset," and they would just add to the smears. And then other people said, "Look, you're bigger than all that combined. You just have to ignore it because if you acknowledge it, you just elevate it and more and more people hear about it than otherwise would," and those are always the two options that you have. Now, there are mitigating factors, that is, I think when race is brought into it that you can't let stand. If people are trying to destroy your reputation and your credibility, your life and your career by attacking you as a racist, then you have to stand up and fight that. Now, we are in the process behind the scenes working to get apologies and retractions with the force of legal action against every journalist who has published these entirely fabricated quotes about me, slavery, and James Earl Ray. I never said them. We have tracked them. We know where they came from. We don't know the identity but we know where they came from, a single blogger who posted the stuff on my Wikipedia page in Wiki quotes, unsourced. Wikipedia says, "Well, this is in dispute." It's not in dispute. They were never uttered. I never said them. And I've even told reporters, "I never said them." One reporter said to me, "Oh, don't worry about it. You've created a masterful publicity stunt here," meaning my effort to buy the St. Louis Rams is just a publicity stunt. "Enjoy the controversy. I'm not going to retract it. Why should I? This is good for you," he wrote. He's black. Jason Whitlock.

RUSH: St. Louis Rams. One of the funny things about this, it's been reported in such a way that leads people to believe I am the primary guy in the group, that I am the major bidder in the group, and that's not the case. You know, I'm from Missouri, a town called Cape Girardeau, a hundred miles south of St. Louis, and I remember when the St. Louis football Cardinals decamped and moved to Arizona. St. Louis is a great sports town. (interruption) What? Yes, it is. A great sports town, St. Louis really is. (interruption) It is. But don't distract me. The opportunity was presented to me to become part of a group that was going to make a bid on the Rams. I've always had a dream of being involved in the National Football League. I love it. I love the people who play the game. I admire 'em. I wish I could do what they do. I wish I could experience what they experience. Do you realize how few people are ever part of a championship team, winning a Super Bowl or a World Series, compared to the percentage of the population. I mean 300 million people and there are 53 players on a Super Bowl team, that's really a rare thing.

I've always admired the people who are the best at what they do and the people in the National Football League are the best at what they do. So I was given an opportunity to be a part of a group and to help, perhaps, keep the team in St. Louis so I eagerly accepted. And now it's being portrayed that I'm the primary owner, primary bidder, which was not the case, I'm just in the group. I can't say who else is in the group except Dave Checketts, it's leaked out, but that's what it is. It just boggles my mind. Now you've got the Justice Brothers, Reverends Jackson and Sharpton, I mean Reverend Jackson rode a bus in Chicago today to the school where the violence took place as though that's going to do anything. I mean these guys are hustling race, I predicted this would happen with President Obama's election. I mean there are people that profit from all this. Reverend Sharpton is one. You know, he wanted to get into radio. I didn't try to stop him even though he's got a checkered past. He was the author of the Tawana Brawley hoax. But I believe in freedom, and I don't discriminate and if he wants to get into radio, fine and dandy.

But look at these people running around trying to prevent people they don't like, don't even know, from engaging in an activity which might actually improve current circumstances. Jesse Jackson, who wanted to neuter President Obama at one point during the campaign, these guys could no more survive being held to the same standard they apply to everybody else, and especially when they get involved they start telling lies about people. So it's a fascinating thing to go through. It's a fascinating thing to watch otherwise professional journalists totally embarrass themselves by repeating fabricated, made-up quotes I have never said. And we found out where it all came from, and we're going to do two things. To everybody who has repeated these lies we're going to send a letter and say, "Back it up, source it, prove it, find out where I said it, I want to know." If they can't, which they won't be able to, then we're going to demand an apology and a retraction, and that is the least that some of these people can do.

Eric in Philadelphia. Got about a minute here but I wanted to squeeze you in before the break. Hello.

CALLER: Listen, this is an honor. Real quick, you gotta go ahead with this thing, man, you gotta buy the Rams. If there's any way you can get that deal done, you gotta get it done. Now, I want to revisit real quick this Donovan McNabb thing. Man, I've been trying to get to you for like four years to say this, okay? When you made your original comments, Tom Jackson, Michael Irvin both were on board with what you said. It took about three days for the deal to unravel, and what happened was, Sharpton and Jackson got to those guys. If you recall, and they started making political things about it and what have you, and then the whole thing came undone --

RUSH: We're having some phone line problems. Every caller we're taking has got static on it. I don't know, is it our phone line? We're working on that. We just lost the call? All right, well I know full well what happened with that, folks. There's more to it than even Eric in Philadelphia said.

RUSH: Well, you know, this would be a good day to do that, Snerdley, because there's about -- let's see -- one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven... I'll tell you what... I'm not through here. Twelve, thirteen, fourteen. I could play fourteen. Hang on, folks. Hang in there. Wait for it. Yeah, I got fourteen in a row. Fourteen sound bites in a row! That's why I said at the beginning of the program, "You know, I'm not comfortable talking about me, ladies and gentlemen," and I certainly don't like being distracted from the issues of the day, but hell, I am one! (sigh) Live it, love it, learn it. So Mister Broadcast Engineer, here's what I want you to do starting now. I want you to go sound bite number two. We're just back-to-back-to-back. It doesn't matter who these people are. I'll tell you in advance it's MSNBC. It's Al Sharpton; it's James Carville; it is Al Sharpton, Al Sharpton, Al Sharpton; and "Mercury" Morris, former player for the Miami Dolphins. You'll be particularly fascinated about that. I'm not even going to read the questions they were asked. We're just going to play sound bites two through fourteen, bam, bam, bam, bam, wham, thank you, ma'am. Are you ready at the broadcast engineer console? Let her rip.

SCARBOROUGH: What is bad, though, is when Rush Limbaugh says on the air what I hear so many people saying -- a lot of Philadelphia fans -- off the air and then he's fired from ESPN.

SCARBOROUGH: And branded a racist because he says on the air what everybody is saying off the air!

DEUTSCH: I can say it now. I called Rush Limbaugh a feminine hygiene product. It starts with a D. Sounds like my last name. Bleeped. You can't say on TV! I'd like people to vote in and say, "Is that an appropriate word for Rush Limbaugh, yes or no?" MSNBC viewers, please vote and call in.

WILBON: One clarification I want to make from Friday's show: I repeated a quotation about slavery that was attributed widely to Rush Limbaugh in a recent newspaper column. Rush called me and said, "Do not believe this! I never said this," and I take him at his word. I look forward to speaking with him perhaps about my larger point of objection.

SANCHEZ: Limbaugh's perceived racist diatribes are (pause) too many to name. Here's a sampling. He once declared that "slavery built the South. I'm not saying we should bring it back; I'm just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark."

SHUSTER: Critics are saying Limbaugh's racially charged remarks through the years, among them: "slavery...had its merits.

HALL: Should a person who says there are "merits" with slavery be able to have this privilege of owning a team?

CARVILLE: The problem is -- is -- and it is not Rush's ideology. It's some of his statements [have] just been very, very unsettling to everybody particularly to African-Americans. He also spoke with some nostalgia about slavery which is, you know, ungh! Not even going to try to go there.

SHARPTON: -- in an industry [with] over two-thirds black players and we're sitting around acting as though that, uhh, this should be questioned?

SHARPTON: Doesn't matter. I think that he sells racial kind of, uh, statements. Whether in his heart he means it or not is really immaterial. You cannot sell that in the daytime and then go to the conference table later and go against what you sold as your personality. He has to be the same person. Are we going to say that Rush is going to say, "Now, that's really just my schtick and here I'm somebody else"? Of course not! He'd put himself out of business.

SHARPTON: I think the question is whether or not the NFL is going to have standards. I think when the Players Association came out this weekend and said that they are objected because he was divisive... Clearly if you have someone that has attacked the players, you have someone that is going to be one of the 32 owners if he was approved that would decide on a proposed walkout, uh, uh, next year, uh, by -- by, uh, the 32 owners, you have to have some standard to say, "But wait a minute. This guy has offended the people that generate the money. This guy would be sitting there deciding on a walkout that affects a hundred thousand employees at stadiums and all kinds of businesses." This is a very sensitive position.

SHARPTON: Race has nothing to do with it. He has offended the players, whether they be black or white. When you say these people are like Crips and Bloods without guns, you gonna disparage these people's character. And now I want to be one of the owners that will decide their contract, decide their future. I think Mr. Morris and I may agree on outcomes. I think he's right. To put him in a hornet's nest at a time when we're going to be making crucial decisions? I think the NFL would be doing itself and those who support it a disservice to have someone who's expressed that kind of opinion on the people involved to be sitting at the table when we gonna see these crucial decisions, which is why I think the Players Association came out over the weekend and made the statement they did.

MORRIS: (laughing) Well, you know what, Rick? The answer to that is (chuckling), is that, when you look at what he said and how he said it, it actually makes some relevant sense.

MORRIS: In 1965, I graduated from high school. The top three problems in the country were running in the hallway, talking in class and being late. Now in 1985, the top three problems were teen violence, teen pregnancy, teen drug use. In 2005, it's still the same. So a whole generation of young people have grown up under the stigma of the Crips and the Bloods, and these some -- some of these people are playing in the NFL now.

MORRIS: So you can't take away from that gene pool that they have to choose from, because it's what society has to offer them.

MORRIS: Hey, I want him on there, because I want him to see what it's like. You know, you can drive a NASCAR and say, "I like to get out there," but you put your butt in that seat and get out there with everybody else, then you get to see what it's really like --

MORRIS: I don't think he's not going to really understand that he's walking into a bee's nest here with these young brothers who think racism is when you don't get to go into the NBA when you're 18, you have to wait until your 20. That's not racism. Racism comes from where I grew up in the 1960s, like Limbaugh did. But it's a different set of circumstances out there, and I would love to see him jump in the middle of it. The Washington Redskins was a segregated team until 1962.

RUSH: The last sound bites there are from Mercury Morris, and he was on CNN's Newsroom yesterday afternoon, and Rick Sanchez could not believe what he was hearing from Mercury Morris. Now, every one of these people from Rick Sanchez to David Shuster to Tamron Hall to James Carville -- who really knows better. James Carville knows me. We have socialized together. James Carville is repeating this totally fabricated lie attributed to me about slavery. We have tracked its origins. Its origins are in 2005, a blogger who was throwing it all over the Internet and then got it into my Wikipedia entry in the Wiki quotes, and even there it says it's unsubstantiated, "disputed," but these people are still going in there and using it. These are professional journalists: Rick Sanchez, Tamron Hall, David Shuster -- who, by the way, NBC already suspended Shuster once for saying that the Clintons "pimped" out Chelsea Clinton.

There was a guy, a sportswriter on MSNBC yesterday morning. Zirin was his name, Dave Zirin from TheNation.com. And then we had Bryan Burwell of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. And a guy named Drew Sharp and numerous personalities on ESPN have repeated that quote and another quote, both of them totally fabricated. It is breathtaking at his. There is no way anybody could have made -- and they say the statement happened in 1998. They all say that. Well, the guy that posted it, his name is "Cobra," by the way. That's his moniker on the Internet. You can hide and be anonymous on the Internet and he's been posting it all over the place, and he claims that he got it from a book.

By the way, the publisher is Nation Books in New York and the quote, he said he got it from a book written by some guy named Huberman, Huberman's book, 101 Worst People in America or whatever. It was published in 2006. The problem is he was spreading it in 2005. We know who the source of this is. We know that the guy that wrote the book did not source the quote! Nobody can source it because it wasn't ever made. I never said it. And look at all of these people who are repeating it without checking, and these are the people who tell us that they are the professionals, that they are the ones we should trust to weed out what's garbage and what's not garbage in the "sewer," they say that is the Internet. They are the sewer! They are the sewer, and they are in the midst of it. They are waste and they are promulgating waste all over the place! (interruption)

Oh, I'm told Mr. Zirin's name is pronounced "Zy-rin." It doesn't matter. Zirin, he was utterly, utterly irresponsible on that program yesterday. These people repeat lies because it fits their already prejudiced agenda. They are the ones with prejudice and bigotry coursing through their vanes, through their hearts, and through their souls. They are consumed with jealousy and rage. They are all liberals -- and make no mistake: That's what this is about. It is about ideology. It isn't about race. It's about their being jealous and attempting to discredit me, and they've now sunk to the low of repeating fabricated quotes that they cannot source. So we have sent them all letters. But we're going to have to add Tamron Hall to the list. We're going to have to add James Carville to the list. We're going to have to add David Shuster to the list. We're going to have to add Al Sharpton to the list.

Who else are we going to have to add to the list? I guess that's it. Of all the other people, Drew Sharp of USA Today, this Zirin guy of The Nation. Bryan Burwell. We're going to say, "You've got a few hours here to produce the citation, produce the source. Source this quote! Tell us where you got it. You prove to me that it was said, or else we will demand a retraction and an apology." I doubt that they care enough. In their minds, "mission accomplished." They're laughing about it and having a grand old time with it. But it is an embarrassment to them. I'm sounding like a parrot here. They ought to be ashamed of themselves to call themselves professionals. They're nothing but hacks. I mean, everybody in the world knows you don't believe anything on Wikipedia because anybody can go in there and put anything on that they want to unless you succeed in getting your site locked, and I don't even care about that.

Wikipedia is as irresponsible as anything else. Anybody can post anything they want on there. But these are the professionals! They're supposed to check this stuff. The idea that somebody could reportedly say, "Hey, slavery was great! You know what? Why, it kept the streets safer at night," in 1998 and it is only now surfacing? I said that in 1998? I guarantee you the Clinton war room would have been all over it! In 1998? This quote sat dormant for 11 years and all of a sudden shows up with a vengeance in conjunction with a report that I am a minority participant, minority participant in a bid to buy the St. Louis Rams? You would think... You know, I'm not hard to reach. My office isn't hard to reach and the radio show is not hard to listen to.

Just find the radio and turn it on. Hit the seek button and you'll find me all over the dial. Whatever happened to journalists calling people and saying, "Did you actually say this? I'm doing a story on blah, blah, blah. Did you actually say this?" They didn't want to take the chance I didn't say it. They wanted the excuse to run the fabricated quote. They wanted the opportunity to do it. These people are scum. They are literal professional scum and they are responsible in many ways for the deteriorating standards and quality of journalism. They are leading the pack. They are found on both the news side and the sports side, and they are doing everything they can to promote disunity and discord throughout our culture and society while holding themselves up in their own minds as great unifiers and people who care only about social justice. When they're basically just incompetent, irresponsible, impersonators of journalism.

RUSH: You know, this is kind of fun. Let's keep this going because I've barely scratched the surface here on the sound bite roster that mentions me. So up next is former St. Louis Ram player D'Marco Farr on a radio station in St. Louis, Chris Matthews and a couple of bites from the pit Yorkie, David Bonior all back-to-back. Here they are.

FARR: I think it's scary. I really do. And I'm not sure you want to bring that brand of humor, because that's what I assume it is, I never listen, never met the guy, all I know is about what I read about Rush Limbaugh. But I do know what he talks about, and the line that he tries to play. It's an easy line to play, it's a race line. I don't know if you want to bring that into the NFL. The NFL is all about bringing guys together, playing together, teamwork. Why would you want to bring that type of divisiveness, you know, outward divisiveness into the NFL?

MATTHEWS: It's so interesting, Rush Limbaugh having the financial power, that's probably bothering a lot of commentators, the fact that he's got the hundreds of millions of dollars from success on the right that he's able to be even in the game of buying a football team, or having a co-ownership.

NEWTON-SMALL: The salary like, you know, he renegotiated his contract last year for $400 million. That's a huge amount of money. I don't know any other journalist that gets paid that much money.

MATTHEWS: It's interesting, because the one thing about this city, spending all these years in Washington, which can be a tough city because you have wealthy people moved here for national reasons, local African-American community, which is not wealthy. It's middle class in most cases these days, but it's tough and there's a lot of natural rivalries going around here. But he comes into a sports team like St. Louis, which can be more, you know, a little more tough on the race front there, down there, I'll bet.

BONIOR: I think we do have to do a better job of counteracting these folks, because in Rush's case, Rush Limbaugh's case, excuse me, I'm not that familiar with him that I should be calling him Rush's case, I tend to think that he appeals to folks who have an intolerance of certain groups in our society and I think that's a losing proposition for the future, and I think that's one of the reasons they were not successful this last election. I think his reputation has been built to some extent, Rush Limbaugh, on his intolerance for gays, women, people of color.

BONIOR: It's a little bit more than that and there's obviously some other pieces that -- I mean the whole Donovan McNabb situation is indicative of the problem he has. He's also had a drug problem. I mean there's a lot of reasons to disqualify him. I don't think he has a chance in hell of getting this franchise.

RUSH: That's David Bonior, who was the campaign manager for John Edwards, who we all know has the John Edwards case, if you will. The first quote was D'Marco Farr, the former player for the St. Louis Rams. Here's a guy that knows only what he reads. He never listens but he knows what I talk about, but he's never listened. He only knows what he reads. And we now know that what he reads is lies, drivel and junk. Oh, I forgot to include Jason Whitlock in this list who repeated these slanderous, made-up, fabricated quotes found in a sewer on the Internet. And the list is expanding. I'm sure there are more people than I have heard throughout the broadcast day on ESPN since the weekend when this all started who have repeated all this stuff as well. I'm just amazed.

In 1998 they say the quote was uttered and only now surfaces 11 years later? Just the right time before Obama's going to get his health care bill at the Senate Finance Committee, right before the NFL owners meeting is taking place today. Isn't it amazing how these people who simply report the news, "Oh, no, no, we're not trying to shape the outcome of this, oh, no, no, we just report the news." No, you make it up. These people do not have the guts to listen to this program. They don't have the guts to call me and ask me, "Did you really say this, or were you kidding or what?" They don't have the guts. They have courage to go on TV and shout their invective and spread their lies and then get the applause from fellow journalists who, "Yeah, what a way to get Limbaugh," and they think they are big shots. They're small fry, insignificant and wish they mattered but they don't.

John in Mokena, Illinois, I'm glad you waited. Welcome to the EIB Network, sir. Hello.

CALLER: You're welcome. Say, with the war on race and the race-baiters like the Jacksons and Sharptons it just seems to me like they're fighting the battles that actually prolong the war. When I think a lot of people, they just want that war to end. And it's like for them race comes first and content of one's character comes second.

RUSH: Jesse Jackson, in fact, shakes or has shaken businesses down, threatened boycotts, a number of things. Al Sharpton has run hoaxes and ended up having innocent people put in jail!

CALLER: Didn't Jackson's son get something with a brewery for the liquor license for --

RUSH: I don't know. The stories are too numerous. And one thing about Sharpton, you know, his comments that we played here having to do with the players association, the NFL Players Association, their contract's about to expire with the league, and Sharpton --

RUSH: -- essentially said that the Players Association is making this move now for leverage against the owners, everybody knows what's going on here. But the idea that these people have credibility only exists because their brethren in the media bestow it upon them. If the media ignored these people, if the media applied the same standards to Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson and all the rest that they apply to all of us in conservative media, those guys couldn't stand 12 minutes of scrutiny.

RUSH: If they had to stand up to the same scrutiny we have to go through each and every day, they couldn't survive it. They exist because they are promoted and all of their shortcomings are ignored, and they are said to have every excuse in the world to hold the positions they have because they're representing minorities, disadvantaged, the poor and so forth, and so they have a little extra license. It's all a scam. It's all a game. And that's how they earn their living.

RUSH: Now, you want to hear something really funny, and I think quite telling, and I think this doesn't require a whole lot of intelligence to figure out. Let's say that you are one of these bigoted, racist, left-wing radical sportswriters, and your agenda is to paint me as that. You're willing to go so far as to use fabricated, made-up quotes that you don't even check, then you say, "Why, this league is 70% African-American. Why, we can't allow racists owning teams." If I'm a racist, why do I want to be part of a business that is 70% African-American that pays them millions of dollars a year?" The two do not go together, do they, Dawn? If I am this horrible person, why do I want anything to do with a business that is 70% African-American, that pays them millions and millions of dollars?

CALLER: Good. I just had a short comment about any accusations that they're trying to make against you, what, over the purchase of a sports team?

CALLER: By trying to justify yourself to them you're actually playing into their hands in a way by giving it credence, and the best thing to do that I found in life is just ignore the whole thing as best you can. Sometimes you can't, but why? Just do it. Just ignore the whole thing.

RUSH: I've been faced with this dilemma since I started this program, and there are two ways to do this. One is to ignore it because all you do is elevate the criticism and please the critics. The other is to address it, but like you said: You have to sometimes. What I have found, and the very few times I've done this, involves race. When they are trying to make a "racist" tag stick, you can't let that happen.

RUSH: That's what this is. These are not race-baiters. These are irresponsible journalists.

RUSH: These are left-wing radical activists who are sports groupies so they become journalists, so they get to hang around with players and all that. And they're nothing but left-wing ideologues. So they try to make this racial stuff stick. When Bill Clinton tried it at the White House Correspondents Dinner back in, I forget,1993? He told a joke, and the room -- 1200 people in the room at the Washington Hilton -- just couldn't believe it. There was nervous laughter, but there was more of an audible gasp. And what that was about, this was shortly after the Waco invasion authored by Janet Reno. And Clinton, when asked about it, said (doing Clinton impression), "Well, that was the attorney general's decision. I didn't have anything to do with that. You'll have to go talk to Janet Reno."

He never even wanted her in there. She was Hillary's hire. So John Conyers of Michigan does some showboat hearings on the Waco invasion, ostensibly to get some information, "What the hell happened here?" and what he ended up doing was berating Janet Reno, which is understandable. But he wasn't getting any answers, he was just showboating up there. He wasn't really trying to get to the bottom of anything. He was taking the occasion of the cameras being on him to act like a big, tough guy. So on my television show I criticized Conyers for running a showboat hearing that didn't accomplish anything. All he spent time doing was attacking Janet Reno.

So Clinton's joke was, "Hey, did you hear Rush defend Janet Reno on his program the other night? I couldn't believe it. Then I realized it was only because she was being attacked by a black guy." Now, we called the White House the following Monday and we got as close to an apology as you'll ever get. I was a guest of the Washington Times I think that night... No, it might have been USA Today, Judy Keen, I think. I forget. But you can't let that stuff stand. You just can't let that stand -- and this particularly. I mean, I would love to be able to ignore this. I told everybody at the beginning of the program, I told the staff during breaks, "I'm very uncomfortable doing this because it's not the normal way I approach this," but this you can't let stand. Especially... These people are going after my livelihood. These people are going after my business. Now, they've always done that for whatever reasons. But there are times, and they are very few, when you have to stand up to it and beat it back -- and this actually is a no-brainer. With all of this based on utter lies, 100% character assassination, purposefully done, it can't stand. So I understand the theory of ignoring it and so forth. I don't care if I'm giving them what they want. The fact is I'm not giving them what they want. They're the ones... They're probably not going to feel bad. I don't think they have any conscience. If they did, they wouldn't have engaged in this matter in the first place. But I appreciate the call, Ted. This is Trace in Cleveland, Tennessee. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Professor Limbaugh, I'm inspired. I'm glad to be a student of the Limbaugh Institute. I'm going to add I'm a little sore because I'm a die-hard, steed blue Colts fan originally from Indianapolis but I want to be the first to get your take on a national headline that's going to sweep the nation that says: "Through Conservative Principles Rush Limbaugh Turns Around the Terrible St. Louis Rams to Win a Super Bowl, and He's Headed to Washington, DC, to Meet President Obama with a Number 44 St. Louis Rams Jersey." Can I get your take?

RUSH: No, because I can't... I appreciate your call but I can't say anything about this whole process. I can't.

CALLER: You can say he held your jersey. Just like President Bush held your bag, Obama is going to be holding your jersey.

CALLER: You know it's what you want. It's your invitation to the White House. Can you imagine if you didn't go?

RUSH: No, I would go. As I told Jamie Gangel in the NBC interview, I would go. She said, "Well, what would you say?" I said, "Hello." "No, no, no! What would you say?" I said, "Well, it'd depend what he wants to talk about. But I would owe him the dignity and the honor of telling him the truth, of being honest about what thought. If he had me up there." But I told her, "Don't look for it." Everybody is under the illusion that President Obama wants to get along and have unity and so forth. Obama clears the playing field of people who are opponents. I mean, look, there's a survey. Somebody in the Drive-Bys did a survey of presidential travel, and 80% of it has been to blue states; 80% of it has been to places that he's going to need for his reelection battle in 2012. His campaign for 2012 has already begun. He's not going to places, say, where there are people who don't like the health care plan and trying to persuade them. He's not going anywhere and saying, "Hey, here's my plan! Look, on page 44 it says right here we're not going to kill grandma." He can't do that because the plan doesn't exist, number one. But he's not out trying to bring everybody together. He says that but that's not what he's doing. Liberals don't do that in general. It's not just Obama. Liberals are not about bringing anybody together. They're about wiping the slate clean. They're about wiping our butts politically. It's what we ought to be about, too, but we're not.

RUSH: All right, now one more store on unemployment. This is from Forbes. "When Work Doesn't Pay for the Middle Class." Now, follow me on this. Story after story... I could do this whole show today on stories of how taxes are taking away the incentive to work, and if you earn more, you lose all sorts of government aid. So the incentive to get out there and get a job is becoming less and less. At the same time, jobs are getting hard to find. "Eighteen months after being laid off, Judith Lederman, a 50-year-old divorcee who lives in Scarsdale, N.Y., is ready to consider jobs paying half the $120,000 she earned as a publicity manager at Lord & Taylor. That's mostly because she's desperate, but it also makes sense when you consider how this country punishes work effort.

"While the first $60,000 of her income would be lightly taxed, the next $60,000 would be hit with what is in effect a 79% tax rate. Given a choice between a part-time or easy job paying $60,000 and a demanding, stress-ridden job paying $120,000, Lederman would be wise to take the [$60,000 job]. In the tougher job she would be contributing twice as much to the economy. But she wouldn't be doing herself much good. It would make more sense to take it easy and spend more time with her high school senior daughter, Casey. How did a middle-class single mom wind up with a 79% marginal tax rate? At $120,000 she would pay $16,500 a year more in federal and state taxes, wouldn't qualify for the five-year $12,000-a-year cut in her mortgage payments she's applying for and would be eligible for $19,000 a year less in need-based college financial aid.

"For decades there has been debate about how to help the poor without discouraging work, saving or marriage. Yet with almost no notice just such disincentives have crept up the income ladder, observes economist C. Eugene Steuerle, a former Treasury official and expert on the taxation of families. At first blush it would be hard to argue with anything that might help Lederman get back on her feet. Mortgage relief? The voters clamored for it. Scholarships for less-prosperous students? Everyone wants poor kids to get the same chances in life as rich ones. Add up all these good intentions, though, and you get some perverse incentives.

"Work isn't the only middle-class virtue that is getting punished. The system penalizes savings, too -- not just through taxes, but also through programs that reward debtors, the profligate and college families that show up at the financial aid office with empty pockets. Yet another series of tax and benefit rules penalizes marriage. 'This is a big social experiment. We really don't know what the long-term effect of all these incentives is going to be,' Steuerle says." Oh, yes. We know exactly what "the long-term effect of all these incentives is." It's to grow the government, and it is to destroy and punish achievement. It's where we are today, folks.

RUSH: Now, here is a telling story within the story. This is a Reuters story, and it was published today. "U.S. Home Rescue Plan Delaying, Not Solving Crisis." There's a telling story within this story. After describing the macro-failure of Obama's bill that claimed to help people who can't afford their home to keep their home, this Reuters story tells the story of an individual that tried to get help from our president and got slapped down. It's a teachable moment. "Within weeks of taking office, U.S. President Barack Obama rode to the rescue of homeowners resigned to financial ruin. Obama, grappling with the worst U.S. housing crisis since the Great Depression, pledged to help as many as 9 million families keep their homes by reworking their mortgages."

Yes, he made that pledge. He didn't live up to it. He failed. "Eight months later, the plan is plagued by delays, red tape and, some critics say, a reluctance by banks to do their part. Just 17 percent of eligible borrowers have had their loans modified and monthly payments cut. Hardly any have been given a cut in the amount they owe on homes which are now worth less. That means many successful applicants are left with loans that they still will not be able to afford in the long run. So instead of resolving the housing crisis that pushed the U.S. economy into recession, America may be prolonging it and, in the process, stunting the global recovery." So how is that hope and change working for you?

We're on the verge, we got the media breathlessly watching the Senate Finance Committee vote on nationalizing health care, and we've got a story today on how a simple little program failed! Remember how they botched cash for clunkers and delayed any genuine recovery in the auto industry. Now we've got this little program that had all these wonderful intentions. Why, to help poor people whose houses had been destroyed, value-wise, with the plunge in the economy! "Wow, we don't want to foreclose on them," Obama said. "We want to find a way to have them keep their homes." Just 17% have had their loans modified. Instead of resolving the housing crisis, America may be prolonging it by not just letting the market work. The market will take care of this, but if you phony...

It's like the poor people in Michigan. Okay, give 'em whatever they're going to get from $15 million in stimulus. But that's eventually going to dry up. And then what do they do? They need work. They need jobs, a steady source of income that results from their work. Okay, so pass out some help for a mortgage. But it's going to end someday. You can't pay everybody's mortgage forever, and then what do these people do? So we're just delaying the inevitable -- and in the process of the delay, we're making the whole problem worse and we're deepening it, because we are delaying the market correction which will automatically happen if you just get out of the way and let it. But these are central planners. They know better than you. They know what kind of car you ought to drive. They know what kind of health insurance you ought to have.

They know what kind of doctor you ought to see. They know what tests you ought to get and what tests you shouldn't get! They know everything. They know which vaccine you should take. They know everything better than you do, and they get their hands on these things and they screw it up every time. They have screwed up the Great Society. They screwed up the War on Poverty. Poverty has won! It's time to declare a winner. Poverty is winning and it's getting worse, after how many trillions that have been spent on it? And now this little program with great intentions. "Oh, yeah, Obama's going to keep me in my house! Obama is going to let me stay in my house!" Oh, Obama is not. Obama's not letting you stay in your house. And the scams associated with this are too numerous to even detail.

The total number of scams related to this mortgage relief program is massive. This makes the scam of the phony, fake applications for the people in Detroit last week for 20 bucks a pop look like a kid's lemonade stand. The scams going on in this program are just... And the people are scamming the government. Any time you put a... This is unalterable; it's not arguable. Any time you put a big pile of money in front of people you're going to have a bunch of different ways people try to get it. Some are going to try to work for it and come by to honestly. Others are going to say, "Ah-ha-ha! Look at all that! I'm going to find a way to scheme and get it" Now, imagine the pile of money people in Washington have to play with every day, but they can't even manage it. They have to print money that we don't have. They have to tax people who are not yet born.

It's just breathtaking to behold. "'Every single policy we've seen has merely kicked the problem down the road,' said Laurie Goodman, a veteran analyst at broker-dealer Amherst Securities Group LP, which specializes in residential mortgage-backed securities. 'But there is no easy solution to the underlying problems.'" Yes, there is! It's called "cut taxes across the board and reduce government spending." Americans need jobs! They need their employers to be flush with cash. They need work. They don't need handouts financed by their neighbors. They need work, a steady stream of income. It is not compassionate to tease people with a handout there and a handout there, and then what happens when it's gone? Like I've always said: We conservatives define compassion not by how many people are receiving government assistance. We instead define compassion by counting the number of people who no longer need it.

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 website reveals a lot of information about politicians and their relationship to money. You can find out, among other things, how many earmarks that Harry Reid has been responsible for in any given year; or how much an individual Congressman’s wealth has increased or decreased since taking office.

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 #97	Kukis Digests and Opines on this Week’s News and Views	October 18, 2009