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).

Kenneth Feinberg, Obama’s pay-czar, told reporters that average salaries for the top 25 executives of 7 companies which received TARP money are being cut 90 percent starting next month. It is unclear whether this is constitutional (it is also unclear whether TARP was constitutional as well).

Furthermore, the Federal Reserve unveiled a proposal Thursday that for the first time would police banks' pay policies to ensure they don't encourage employees to take reckless gambles like those that contributed to the financial crisis. This new policy is applicable to all banking institutions, whether they took TARP funds or not. The Fed is not setting the salaries, but is reserving a veto power over salaries if they see these pay policies as causing too much risk-taking by executives, traders or loan officers.

At the same time, Freddie Mac (FHLMC) is giving its chief financial officer compensation worth as much as $5.5 million, including a $2 million signing bonus. The Fed has chosen not to impose any salary restrictions on FNMA or FHLMC.

It appears as thought ACORN was promised about $1 million from FEMA or from the Department of Homeland Security. This is a grant under the FY 2008 Fire Prevention and Safety Program. This is supposed to be a fire prevention and safety grant. FEMA says that they have not actually given this grant to ACORN, although it is apparent that this was in the works, even with FEMA’s denials. In any case, in 2007, FEMA did give a grant of about half that much to ACORN.

This past Monday, President Obama provided an off-the-record briefing for MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddox, Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post, Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, Gwen Ifill of PBS and Gloria Borger of CNN. No one from FoxNews was invited to this meeting. It is unclear exactly what was covered in this 2.5 hour briefing.

The White House has portrayed FoxNews as not a real news organization and has vilified the Chamber of Commerce and continues to demonize medical insurance companies.

Since the president has explained that FoxNews is no longer a news station, MSNBC has proclaimed itself as the #1 cable news station (although, it was hard to discern, if this was serious or not).

African leaders are demanding $65 billion in compensation from industrialized nations for their hand in global warming.

There is this rumor that Obama is going to hire a new lawyer, the husband of his communications director, Anita Dunn, the gal who loves the philosopher Mao.

The press continues to tell us we are out of the recession, but that 10% may be the new norm when it comes to unemployment. Prior to the Great Depression and all of FDR’s programs, unemployment was around 3%.

The Senate votes down the first part of Obama-care, which would have provided higher payments to physicians under medicare and added $247 billion to our deficit. The plan was to isolate this part of the Obama-care bill so that it did not seem so expensive.

There is a taxpayer bill of rights legislation proposed in two liberal states: Maine and Washington. Essentially, these bills limit the growth of state government to match population growth + inflation. In order to raise taxes for more than this, the state would have to put this before the people of the state.

One of the very quiet events this week was the reduction of union oversight by the federal government. The Labor Department will no longer require these things of unions:

•Disclose the total value of benefits received by union officers and employees;

In other political news, there was legislation proposed to establish a Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA). An amendment offered by Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) will make ACORN eligible to play a role in setting regulations for financial institutions.

Headline of Jacob Weisberg’s piece for Newsweek Magazine: “Fox News isn't just bad. It's un-American”

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi explaining how allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire would not be a tax increase: “That wasn't a tax increase. It is- it is- eliminating a tax- decrease that was there. It's- it was controversial to begin with.”

When asked if this non-tax increase would have a deleterious affect on our fragile economy, Nancy Pelosi explains, “I don't think many people here see, nor do the American people see those tax cuts at the high end as being job-creating. They don't- they think that that's part of the reason we're in the fiscal, the budgetary situation that we're in, because those tax cuts cost money. And- they were- a cost to our budget, without any commensurate- impact on the economy for job creation. To return money- to the treasury. So, nobody sees those as a job-creator. And- and- the- the fact is, is we have to be acting in a fiscally sound way. And we can't afford those taxes. We never could. Those tax cuts.”

Christina Romer, chairwoman of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers “By mid-2010, [the] fiscal stimulus [bill] will likely be contributing little to further growth.”

“For millions of Americans, this is a depression,” said Joe Biden, having just noted that, when you’re out of work, it is a depression.

“The difference between Fox and news is the way in which one of these things [go to a graphic listing all of the television news outlets are shown] is not like the other is that, only one of these organizations is organizing anti-government street protests.” Rachel Maddow on the Rachel Maddow Show.

“Before the break, we got a whiff of the anti-Obama propaganda spewing from the FoxNews channel; right-thinking people see that footage and know that they are not watching real news.” from a right-thinking commentator Richard Wolfe on the Keith Olbermann Show.

Democratic Representative Alan Grayson, “The Republicans operate simply by vilifying their enemies and nothing else...You know, FoxNews and their Republican collaborators are enemies of America; they’re the enemy of anyone who cares about healthcare in the country; the enemy of anyone who cares about educating their children, the enemy of everybody who wants energy independence or anything good for this country, and certainly, the enemy of anyone who wants peace—there is no doubt about that.”

Grayson about the Cheney speech, “I have trouble listening to what he says sometimes because of the blood that drips from his teeth while he is talking; but my response is this: he is just angry because the President doesn’t shoot old men in the face.”

From Time’s Joe Klein’s blog: “Let me be precise here: Fox News peddles a fair amount of hateful crap. Some of it borders on sedition. Much of it is flat out untrue.”

When George Stephanopoulos told George Will that the president said he would not sign a bill which adds to the deficit, Will replied, “Sentences which begin with ‘The President says’ are not as impressive as they used to be.”

It appears as though tax credits designed to encourage people to purchase electric vehicles can be used to purchase golf carts. The federal $4200–5500 credit can be combined with some state incentives to pay for a new cart.

Of the latest back and forth between Cheney and the White House, a female panelist on Hannity noted “The media is trying to make this aws Cheney versus the White house; the real question is, who is right?”

Text and video of Dick Cheney’s speech this week on national security (the text is also included in this issue of CR):

In case you missed it, this is the bedtime story warning the little girl about CO₂ emissions.

This is, in case you are interested, media: Rachel Maddow’s show after the White House meeting. The meeting is mentioned in passing, but the thrust of piece is that FoxNews is not a news station.

Seth Myers on Saturday Night Live: “Olympia Snow’s vote [on the healthcare bill] was hailed as a victory for bipartisanship. 1 vote means you are bipartisan? Those are pretty low standards. It’s like saying you are bi-lingual because you say, ‘hola’ to the nanny.”

1) Although I found a mention of the White House meeting with Olbermann, Maddow and others on Olbermann and Maddow’s web pages, I did not see any details about the meeting.

2) Glenn Beck suggests—and this makes sense to me—that the White House is promoting their attack on FoxNews to draw attention away from the healthcare debate.

3) Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and Michael Medved are all accused of being Republican shills; so why are they all publically supporting a conservative candidate over a Gingrich-supported Republican candidate in NY?

4) Count me as one of those who believes that the idea of a new election in Afghanistan because there were possible problems in the first election is a great thing. We should have done this in Minnesota.

5) Michigan is giving up to a 42% tax break to filmmakers who make their films in Michigan. Last I heard, there are 100 films being shot in Michigan. This is fascinating...you lower taxes for a business and that business moves into your state! What a concept. Maybe their liberal governor has unwittingly discovered a deep truth.

6) I cannot recall if I made this point last week, but CNN fact-checked a Saturday Night Live skit, but did not bother to fact check some horrendous (and false) statements attributed to Rush Limbaugh which they reported on.

7) A liberal on the FoxNews network castigated Glenn Beck for smearing Obama’s czars. By smearing, she meant playing video tape of these czars speaking their minds and giving their opinions. She forgot to mention how divisive this is.

8) So the White House wants to limit the salaries of those companies which took TARP money, contending that, if they did not want government intrusion, they should not have taken the taxpayer’s money. Some banking executives are saying that they were told to take TARP money or else. So, when it is a rich businessman versus a politician, who do you believe?

9) Glenn Beck said that the White House attack on a variety of institutions always follows the same pattern: they accuse the entity of doing wrong or of wrong-thinking; they indicate that this is dangerous to the public; and they blame the profit motive. Heritage.Org adds that their method of choice is rule #13 from Saul Alinky’s Rules for Radicals: "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it." Watch for this for every enemy defined by the White House.

10) I just heard of one more way that the federal government contributed to our present recession. They rated these semi-worthless mortgage-backed securities AAA, which allowed for them to be sold to all kinds of investors. These securities were backed by loans that lenders (under government supervision) should not have made in the first place. This ended up putting trillions of dollars worth of worthless assets on the books of many banks, insurance companies and mutual funds.

11) My problem with the government regulating salaries of bank executives who took TARP money is, all of this mess was the government’s fault to begin with. Had the government not pushed home loans which would not be paid back, we would not be in the mess we are in today.

12) One of my problems with TARP is this: why are the big banks allowed to continue using TARP money, and yet 100 little banks are being taken over (and many sold to these larger financial institutions). It makes much more sense to me to take huge financial conglomerates which are in trouble and break them up into little pieces and sell the little pieces.

13) Mike, of Flopping Aces, has pointed out that there is no union pay czar. One of the greatest problems facing our car manufacturers are the union contracts, their benefits, and the huge benefits given to retirees. And yet, there is no union pay czar.

14) Has our school system failed so much, that Hitler is viewed a consummate evil, but Mao is not?

15) Two White House officials have praised Chairman Mao; at least one has stated that he himself is a Communist, and Obama has talked on many occasions about sharing the wealth. Furthermore, this administration has attacked those with wealth in a variety of ways, demonizing large groups of them; and every major program put forth has some element of wealth distribution as a major part of the bill. At what point do liberals agree that calling Obama a socialist is not hyperbole?

16) The problem with this socialist label is, a significant number of people do not view it as a serious negative.

Someone has to be able to do an Alan Grayson on that program; his speeches and interviews could be used word-for-word. Seth Myers would not even have to write this.

The attacks on FoxNews are designed to take our attention away from the healthcare debate (Glenn Beck’s idea). During that time, it appears as if the Democratic Senate has inserted the public option into their bill. I would not be surprised if Alan Grayson is a part of this sleight-of-hand.

Evan Bayh, Robert Byrd, Kent Conrad, Byron Dorgan, Russ Feingold, Herb Kohl, Claire McCaskill, Bill Nelson, Jon Tester, Mark Warner, Jim Webb, Ron Wyden all voted against legislation which would have raised medicare pay to doctors. This would have been an unpaid for $247 billion added to our deficit and the first step in passing Obama-care.

Since Christina Romer has said that the Stimulus Bill will have very little stimulative effect in 2010, why not stop the stimulus bill spending?

Will the public be given a reasonable amount of time to read and digest the healthcare bill before any voting is done? Will we be given enough time for our input on this matter? This bill will affect every man, woman and child in America; do you think the American people should have some real input? Since this bill will affect 1/6^th of the nation’s economy, do you think, after the bill is written, that we ought to stand back and examine it for a month or two to try and determine what the unintended consequences of such a bill would be?

“Obama’s bold action in the stimulus bill pulled us back from the precipice of economic disaster” means “Sure, the economy could be worse than this...just give us a little more time.”

If you think that the estimated cost for the government healthcare bill is anywhere close to what will really happen. History has shown us, again and again, whatever program the government proposes always costs more—as much as 10X the amount estimated. Only one exception to this, by the way.

Look for President Obama to favor climate justice, which means he will support giving billions of dollars to Africa for the chaos we industrialized nations have caused there by our causing great climate change in the world.

The press continues to report that we are out of the recession, but it is warning us that 10% unemployment may be the new norm.

Obama had no business and no executive experience; so he has not even a clue as to how to improve our economy (the very thing which got him elected in the first place).

Some sort of public support for liberal publications is now being discussed (perhaps along the lines of NPR).

I said that Obama was going to try to sell another Stimulus Bill, but they would call it something else:

Recently, there have been stories about the nation’s largest solar farm being set up in DeSoto, Florida, a project which created 400 jobs and was completed in less than a year at a cost of $150 million. This project covers an area of over 180 acres and must be fed into the current system because (1) solar power cannot be stored (2) solar power does not work at night. It will also reduce greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 3.5 million tons.

Here’s the catch: essentially, this will power 3000 homes and business. Let’s be generous and assume that each of those homes has a quarter-acre lot; then 180 acres is being used to power up 750 acres. On that 180 acres, there will be no plants or trees to remove deadly dangerous CO₂ from the air; and, quite obviously, no crops or animal life will live on that 180 acres.

Let’s compare this to a mini-nuclear power plant. They can be produced for $25 million and can power 20,000 homes...and their footprint? They are smaller than a garden shed.

(however, this does not factor into account the missing eco-system for Solar power)

The big negative for solar power: they use up a lot of water; the big negative for nuclear power: there is the nuclear waste problem. I say we use the moon as a dump site.

CHENEY: Thank you all very much. It's a pleasure to be here, and especially to receive the Keeper of the Flame Award in the company of so many good friends.

I'm told that among those you've recognized before me was my friend Don Rumsfeld. I don't mind that a bit. It fits something of a pattern. In a career that includes being chief of staff, congressman, and secretary of defense, I haven't had much that Don didn't get first. But truth be told, any award once conferred on Donald Rumsfeld carries extra luster, and I am very proud to see my name added to such a distinguished list.

To Frank Gaffney and all the supporters of Center for Security Policy, I thank you for this honor. And I thank you for the great energy and high intelligence you bring to as vital a cause as there is - the advance of freedom and the uncompromising defense of the United States.

Most anyone who is given responsibility in matters of national security quickly comes to appreciate the commitments and structures put in place by others who came before. You deploy a military force that was planned and funded by your predecessors. You inherit relationships with partners and obligations to allies that were first undertaken years and even generations earlier. With the authority you hold for a little while, you have great freedom of action. And whatever course you follow, the essential thing is always to keep commitments, and to leave no doubts about the credibility of your country's word.

So among my other concerns about the drift of events under the present administration, I consider the abandonment of missile defense in Eastern Europe to be a strategic blunder and a breach of good faith.

It is certainly not a model of diplomacy when the leaders of Poland and the Czech Republic are informed of such a decision at the last minute in midnight phone calls. It took a long time and lot of political courage in those countries to arrange for our interceptor system in Poland and the radar system in the Czech Republic. Our Polish and Czech friends are entitled to wonder how strategic plans and promises years in the making could be dissolved, just like that - with apparently little, if any, consultation. Seventy years to the day after the Soviets invaded Poland, it was an odd way to mark the occasion.

You hardly have to go back to 1939 to understand why these countries desire - and thought they had - a close and trusting relationship with the United States. Only last year, the Russian Army moved into Georgia, under the orders of a man who regards the collapse of the Soviet Union as the greatest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century. Anybody who has spent much time in that part of the world knows what Vladimir Putin is up to. And those who try placating him, by conceding ground and accommodating his wishes, will get nothing in return but more trouble.

What did the Obama Administration get from Russia for its abandonment of Poland and the Czech Republic, and for its famous "Reset" button? Another deeply flawed election and continued Russian opposition to sanctioning Iran for its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

In the short of it, President Obama's cancellation of America's agreements with the Polish and Czech governments was a serious blow to the hopes and aspirations of millions of Europeans. For twenty years, these peoples have done nothing but strive to move closer to us, and to gain the opportunities and security that America offered. These are faithful friends and NATO allies, and they deserve better. The impact of making two NATO allies walk the plank won't be felt only in Europe. Our friends throughout the world are watching and wondering whether America will abandon them as well.

Big events turn on the credibility of the United States - doing what we said we would do, and always defending our fundamental security interests. In that category belong the ongoing missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the need to counter the nuclear ambitions of the current regime in Iran.

Candidate Obama declared last year that he would be willing to sit down with Iran's leader without preconditions. As President, he has

committed America to an Iran strategy that seems to treat engagement as an objective rather than a tactic. Time and time again, he has outstretched his hand to the Islamic Republic's authoritarian leaders, and all the while Iran has continued to provide lethal support to extremists and terrorists who are killing American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Islamic Republic continues to provide support to extremists in Syria, Lebanon, and the Palestinian territories. Meanwhile, the regime continues to spin centrifuges and test missiles. And these are just the activities we know about.

I have long been skeptical of engagement with the current regime in Tehran, but even Iran experts who previously advocated for engagement have changed their tune since the rigged elections this past June and the brutal suppression of Iran's democratic protestors. The administration clearly missed an opportunity to stand with Iran's democrats, whose popular protests represent the greatest challenge to the Islamic Republic since its founding in 1979. Instead, the President has been largely silent about the violent crackdown on Iran's protestors, and has moved blindly forward to engage Iran's authoritarian regime. Unless the Islamic Republic fears real consequences from the United States and the international community, it is hard to see how diplomacy will work.

Next door in Iraq, it is vitally important that President Obama, in his rush to withdraw troops, not undermine the progress we've made in recent years. Prime Minister Maliki met yesterday with President Obama, who began his press availability with an extended comment about Afghanistan. When he finally got around to talking about Iraq, he told the media that he reiterated to Maliki his intention to remove all U.S. troops from Iraq. Former President Bush's bold decision to change strategy in Iraq and surge U.S. forces there set the stage for success in that country. Iraq has the potential to be a strong, democratic ally in the war on terrorism, and an example of economic and democratic reform in the heart of the Middle East. The Obama Administration has an obligation to protect this young democracy and build on the strategic success we have achieved in Iraq.

We should all be concerned as well with the direction of policy on Afghanistan. For quite a while, the cause of our military in that country went pretty much unquestioned, even on the left. The effort was routinely praised by way of contrast to Iraq, which many wrote off as a failure until the surge proved them wrong. Now suddenly - and despite our success in Iraq - we're hearing a drumbeat of defeatism over Afghanistan. These criticisms carry the same air of hopelessness, they offer the same short-sighted arguments for walking away, and they should be summarily rejected for the same reasons of national security.

Having announced his Afghanistan strategy last March, President Obama now seems afraid to make a decision, and unable to provide his commander on the ground with the troops he needs to complete his mission.

President Obama has said he understands the stakes for America. When he announced his new strategy he couched the need to succeed in the starkest possible terms, saying, quote, "If the Afghan government falls to the Taliban - or allows al-Qaeda to go unchallenged - that country will again be a base for terrorists who want to kill as many of our people as they possibly can." Five months later, in August of this year, speaking at the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the President made a promise to America's armed forces. "I will give you a clear mission," he said, "defined goals, and the equipment and support you need to get the job done. That's my commitment to you."

It's time for President Obama to make good on his promise. The White House must stop dithering while America's armed forces are in danger.

Make no mistake, signals of indecision out of Washington hurt our allies and embolden our adversaries. Waffling, while our troops on the ground face an emboldened enemy, endangers them and hurts our cause.

Recently, President Obama's advisors have decided that it's easier to blame the Bush Administration than support our troops. This weekend they leveled a charge that cannot go unanswered. The President's chief of staff claimed that the Bush Administration hadn't asked any tough questions about Afghanistan, and he complained that the Obama Administration had to start from scratch to put together a strategy.

In the fall of 2008, fully aware of the need to meet new challenges being posed by the Taliban, we dug into every aspect of Afghanistan policy, assembling a team that traveled to Pakistan and Afghanistan, reviewing options and recommendations, and briefing President-elect Obama's team. They asked us not to announce our findings publicly, and we agreed, giving them the benefit of our work and the benefit of the doubt. The new strategy they embraced in March, with a focus on counterinsurgency and an increase in the numbers of troops, bears a striking resemblance to the strategy we passed to them. They made a decision - a good one, I think - and sent a commander into the field to implement it.

Now they seem to be pulling back and blaming others for their failure to implement the strategy they embraced. It's time for President Obama to do what it takes to win a war he has repeatedly and rightly called a war of necessity.

It's worth recalling that we were engaged in Afghanistan in the 1980's, supporting the Mujahadeen against the Soviets. That was a successful policy, but then we pretty much put Afghanistan out of our minds. While no one was watching, what followed was a civil war, the takeover by the Taliban, and the rise of bin Laden and al-Qaeda. All of that set in motion the events of 9/11. When we deployed forces eight years ago this month, it was to make sure Afghanistan would never again be a training ground for the killing of Americans. Saving untold thousands of lives is still the business at hand in this fight. And the success of our mission in Afghanistan is not only essential, it is entirely achievable with enough troops and enough political courage.

Then there's the matter of how to handle the terrorists we capture in this ongoing war. Some of them know things that, if shared, can save a good many innocent lives. When we faced that problem in the days and years after 9/11, we made some basic decisions. We understood that organized terrorism is not just a law-enforcement issue, but a strategic threat to the United States.

At every turn, we understood as well that the safety of the country required collecting information known only to the worst of the terrorists. We had a lot of blind spots - and that's an awful thing, especially in wartime. With many thousands of lives potentially in the balance, we didn't think it made sense to let the terrorists answer questions in their own good time, if they answered them at all.

The intelligence professionals who got the answers we needed from terrorists had limited time, limited options, and careful legal guidance. They got the baddest actors we picked up to reveal things they really didn't want to share. In the case of Khalid Sheik Muhammed, by the time it was over he was not was not only talking, he was practically conducting a seminar, complete with chalkboards and charts. It turned out he had a professorial side, and our guys didn't mind at all if classes ran long. At some point, the mastermind of 9/11 became an expansive briefer on the operations and plans of al-Qaeda. It happened in the course of enhanced interrogations. All the evidence, and common sense as well, tells us why he started to talk.

The debate over intelligence gathering in the seven years after 9/11 involves much more than historical accuracy. What we're really debating are the means and resolve to protect this country over the next few years, and long after that. Terrorists and their state sponsors must be held accountable, and America must remain on the offensive against them. We got it right after 9/11. And our government needs to keep getting it right, year after year, president after president, until the danger is finally overcome.

Our administration always faced its share of criticism, and from some quarters it was always intense. That was especially so in the later

years of our term, when the dangers were as serious as ever, but the sense of general alarm after 9/11 was a fading memory. Part of our responsibility, as we saw it, was not to forget the terrible harm that had been done to America . and not to let 9/11 become the prelude to something much bigger and far worse.

Eight years into the effort, one thing we know is that the enemy has spent most of this time on the defensive - and every attempt to strike inside the United States has failed. So you would think that our successors would be going to the intelligence community saying, "How did you did you do it? What were the keys to preventing another attack over that period of time?"

Instead, they've chosen a different path entirely - giving in to the angry left, slandering people who did a hard job well, and demagoguing an issue more serious than any other they'll face in these four years. No one knows just where that path will lead, but I can promise you this: There will always be plenty of us willing to stand up for the policies and the people that have kept this country safe.

On the political left, it will still be asserted that tough interrogations did no good, because this is an article of faith for them, and actual evidence is unwelcome and disregarded. President Obama himself has ruled these methods out, and when he last addressed the subject he filled the air with vague and useless platitudes. His preferred device is to suggest that we could have gotten the same information by other means. We're invited to think so. But this ignores the hard, inconvenient truth that we did try other means and techniques to elicit information from Khalid Sheikh Muhammed and other al-Qaeda operatives, only turning to enhanced techniques when we failed to produce the actionable intelligence we knew they were withholding. In fact, our intelligence professionals, in urgent circumstances with the highest of stakes, obtained specific information, prevented specific attacks, and saved American lives.

In short, to call enhanced interrogation a program of torture is not only to disregard the program's legal underpinnings and safeguards. Such accusations are a libel against dedicated professionals who acted honorably and well, in our country's name and in our country's

cause. What's more, to completely rule out enhanced interrogation in the future, in favor of half-measures, is unwise in the extreme. In the fight against terrorism, there is no middle ground, and half-measures keep you half exposed.

For all that we've lost in this conflict, the United States has never lost its moral bearings - and least of all can that be said of our armed forces and intelligence personnel. They have done right, they have made our country safer, and a lot of Americans are alive today because of them.

Last January 20th, our successors in office were given the highest honors that the voters of this country can give any two citizens. Along with that, George W. Bush and I handed the new president and vice president both a record of success in the war on terror, and the policies to continue that record and ultimately prevail. We had been the decision makers, but those seven years, four months, and nine days without another 9/11 or worse, were a combined achievement: a credit to all who serve in the defense of America, including some of the finest people I've ever met.

What the present administration does with those policies is their call to make, and will become a measure of their own record. But I will tell you straight that I am not encouraged when intelligence officers who acted in the service of this country find themselves hounded with a zeal that should be reserved for America's enemies. And it certainly is not a good sign when the Justice Department is set on a political mission to discredit, disbar, or otherwise persecute the very people who helped protect our nation in the years after 9/11.

There are policy differences, and then there are affronts that have to be answered every time without equivocation, and this is one of them. We cannot protect this country by putting politics over security, and turning the guns on our own guys.

We cannot hope to win a war by talking down our country and those who do its hardest work - the men and women of our military and intelligence services. They are, after all, the true keepers of the flame.

I posted the video last week, but I have watched this a vew times and it makes me want to get up and dance; here are the lyrics:

During the campaign Barack Obama vowed he would be a different kind of leader who would move America beyond the "smallness of our politics." That inspired promise was not an insignificant part of why he was elected last November.

In his inaugural address Obama told us that "the time has come to set aside childish things." He promised to bring "an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics."

Not only has President Obama failed to live up to those promises so far, it appears that on more than a number of occasions he's made a conscious decision to break them.

In the first nine months in office President Obama and/or members of his administration have accused doctors of performing unnecessary medical procedures for profit; demonized bond holders as "speculators;" produced a report suggesting military veterans are prone to becoming right wing extremists; attacked insurance companies and threatened them with legislative retribution; ridiculed talk show hosts and political commentators by name from the White House podium; dismissed and demeaned protesters and town hall attendees as either unauthentic or fringe characters; maligned a white police officer for arresting a black man without knowing the facts of the case; launched an orchestrated campaign to marginalize the country's biggest pro-business group; and publicly declared war on a news organization.

Twice in the last week, perhaps carried away by the campaign atmosphere, President Obama ramped up the use of the kind of partisan rhetoric that will drive Americans further apart; once in San Francisco at a DNC fundraiser and once last night at a rally for Jon Corzine.

As a result of this strategy, President Obama's approval rating has fallen consistently since taking office while Americans' disapproval of the way he's handled his job has more than doubled and is now at an all time high of 44 percent. On Wednesday Gallup reported that the 9-point drop in Obama's approval rating between July and September was the third most precipitous decline in Presidential history and the worst since 1953.

Americans understand it's not easy governing a country as divided as ours. It takes hard work to find common ground in a system that's been increasingly polarized, and it takes political courage for a President to buck the interests of the base of his party when necessary. More than anything else, achieving real bipartisanship requires a good faith effort led by the President that genuinely seeks compromise with the opposition without demonizing, dismissing, or demeaning them.

In fact, that's exactly how then candidate Obama described his vision of "genuine bipartisanship" in his book, The Audacity of Hope. Obama wrote on page 131:

Genuine bipartisanship, though, assumes an honest process of give-and-take, and that the quality of the compromise is measured by how well it serves some agreed-upon goal, whether better schools or lower deficits. This in turn assumes that the majority will be constrained - by an exacting press corps and ultimately an informed electorate - to negotiate in good faith. If these conditions do not hold - if nobody outside Washington is really paying attention to the substance of the bill, if the true costs of the tax cut are buried in phony accounting and understated by a trillion dollars or so - the majority party can begin every negotiation by asking for 100 percent of what it wants, go on to concede 10 percent, and then accuse any member of the minority party who fails to support this "compromise" of being "obstructionist."

Though Obama wrote that as a member of the minority and a critique of past policies, it sounds eerily familiar to what's going on in Washington right now.

Hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicare savings are promised - savings that we're told cannot occur without voting for a total overhaul of the health care system. Hundreds of billions more have been offloaded in a budget gimmick to make the bill appear less costly than it really is so it will comply with the President's promise not to add a dime to the federal deficit. Substantive measures proposed by the opposition that would seem to be common sense to include in a "comprehensive" effort - like medical malpractice reform - have been given short shrift.

Lastly, promises of transparency have fallen by the wayside. The reform the President promised would be fully open to the public is now being written by a tiny cadre behind closed doors on Capitol Hill, and Democrats in Congress are resisting a rules change that would allow the bill to be posted online 72 hours before a vote so the public might have a chance to see exactly what it is their elected representatives are voting on.

Voters expect politicians to say one thing and do another. But Obama took the public's cynicism and turned it to his advantage by vowing he would be a different kind of leader. So far, however, he is falling well short of his promises, using tactics and rhetoric that not only drive Americans apart but hurt him politically. It's time for Obama to start acting like the President he told us he'd be.

In his campaign for health-care reform, President Obama has repeatedly harped about a primary care doctor shortage. "The status quo is we don't have enough primary care physicians," President Obama said in an ABC interview in July. The president promises that his health-care reform proposal will address the problem of a primary care physician shortage---and he's right. He will make it worse.

Mr. Obama wants to provide insurance for an additional 30 million Americans, but recent experience in Massachusetts shows that universal coverage will result in an even greater physician shortage and longer waiting times for patients.

Because Massachusetts' Commonwealth system served as the model for the universal coverage Mr. Obama wants to implement nationwide, a few results of its health-care experiment are worth noting. A 2008 Physician Workforce Study by the Massachusetts Medical Society found that the percentage of residents having difficulty getting care rose to 24% from 16% between 2007 and 2008. Since 2006 when the Commonwealth system was implemented, internal medicine and family practice went from having labor market conditions that were considered "soft" or unstressed to being the only two specialties with labor market conditions classified as "severe" or experiencing the highest possible degree of stress.

And with 33% of the state's primary care doctors now considering changing professions due to dissatisfaction with the current practice environment---an increase of 8% in the last year---Massachusetts' problems are just beginning. Because of physicians' overbearing work loads and a massive administrative bureaucracy, Massachusetts is struggling to recruit and retain doctors. About three-quarters of medical group directors say that their ability to retain physicians has become more difficult in the last three years. Over half of the state's resident physicians choose to practice elsewhere.

Massachusetts provides just a taste of what the U.S. has to look forward to with ObamaCare, but it's enough to make anyone want to forgo the whole dish. The Association of American Medical Colleges predicts a primary care physician shortage of 46,000 by 2025, and if universal health care is passed, the physician shortage would increase by 25%.

If Mr. Obama intends to implement universal health care, he can do a few things to increase the supply of primary care doctors to meet the sudden surge in demand his plan would create. But as with most other ObamaCare "fixes," these solutions would just create new problems.

First, the president can try to increase the number of medical students entering primary care through incentives like improved student loan programs. But loan repayment programs aimed at enticing medical students into primary care are going to be just about as effective as they are at enticing young attorneys into civil service, which is to say, not very.

While medical students graduate with an average debt of $154,607, the discrepancy between the earnings of primary care physicians and specialists after a few years eclipses the benefits of increased financial aid. According to data compiled by physician research and consulting company Merritt Hawkins, family physicians earn on average $173,000 a year compared to $335,000 for oncologists and $419,000 for cardiologists. Even if the federal government were to pay off all of primary care physicians' student loans, specialists would still be financially better off than primary care doctors after only a few years.

Mr. Obama ignores two of the most important reasons why U.S. medical students specialize: they want more flexible, lighter work loads and don't want to deal with primary care's tangle of bureaucracy. The SF Gate notes that according to a University of Missouri and the Federal Health Resources and Services Administration estimate, ObamaCare would increase the work load of primary care physicians by 29% in the next 15 years. By increasing primary care physicians' work loads and adding a new, government insurance bureaucracy, ObamaCare would make primary care even less attractive.

Mr. Obama could also try to incentivize docs to pursue primary care by increasing their payments. But this is a zero-sum game as doctors are already finding out. This year Medicare payments to primary care doctors are increasing by 6-8% while payments to specialists are getting cut to compensate for this increase.

Even if Mr. Obama were to succeed at enticing more medical students into primary care, he'd have to grapple with Medicare's current cap on Graduate Medical Education residency funding. Passed to slow growth in Medicare spending, the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 maintains Medicare funding for Graduate Medical Education at 1996 levels and thereby acts as a ceiling on the physician supply. That means any increase in the number of primary care physicians would require a commensurate decrease in the number of specialists.

In order to prevent a reduction in specialists while increasing the number of primary care physicians, Congress would have to lift Graduate Medical Education caps. But lifting GME caps, the most important step to increasing the primary care physician supply, isn't part of the legislation, mainly because Congress doesn't want to further inflate the price tag on this trillion dollar behemoth. According to Atul Grover, M.D. of the AAMC, adding 30,000 new residency positions---which is what Mr. Grover says would be necessary to offset the impending physician shortage---would cost about $25 billion over 10 years.

By drastically increasing demand while doing little to increase primary care physician supply, ObamaCare will turn health care into a consumer nightmare: longer wait times, shorter visits, higher prices, and decreased customer satisfaction. The U.S. will have to rely increasingly on nurse practitioners and physician assistants to meet patient demand. According to the WHO, the nurse-to-physician ratio in Canada and the U.K. are 5.3 and 5.6, respectively, compared to 3.6 in the U.S. And as fewer bright young people pursue medicine due to the profession's general malaise and oppressive bureaucratic regulations, we're likely to see an even greater physician shortage---not just in primary care, but in specialty care as well.

A September survey by Investors Business Daily found that 45% of doctors would consider quitting if Congress passes its "comprehensive" health-care overhaul, largely because of the increased bureaucracy and liabilities and lower reimbursements. The U.S. is facing a John Galt-like protest from doctors. The Obama administration may soon be wondering: who is John Galt?

They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That's the Chicago way.

When Barack Obama promised to deliver "a new kind of politics" to Washington, most folk didn't picture Rahm Emanuel with a baseball bat. These days, the capital would make David Mamet, who wrote Malone's memorable movie dialogue, proud.

A White House set on kneecapping its opponents isn't, of course, entirely new. (See: Nixon) What is a little novel is the public and bare-knuckle way in which the Obama team is waging these campaigns against the other side.

In recent weeks the Windy City gang added a new name to their list of societal offenders: the Chamber of Commerce. For the cheek of disagreeing with Democrats on climate and financial regulation, it was reported the Oval Office will neuter the business lobby. Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett slammed the outfit as "old school," and warned CEOs they'd be wise to seek better protection.

That was after the president accused the business lobby of false advertising. And that recent black eye for the Chamber (when several companies, all with Democratic ties, quit in a huff)-think that happened on its own? ("Somebody messes with me, I'm gonna mess with him! Somebody steals from me, I'm gonna say you stole. Not talk to him for spitting on the sidewalk. Understand!?")

The Chamber can at least take comfort in crowds. Who isn't on the business end of the White House's sawed-off shotgun? First up were Chrysler bondholders who-upon balking at a White House deal that rewarded only unions-were privately threatened and then publicly excoriated by the president.

Next, every pharmaceutical, hospital and insurance executive in the nation was held out as a prime obstacle to health-care nirvana. And that was their reward for cooperating. When Humana warned customers about cuts to Medicare under "reform," the White House didn't bother to complain. They went straight for the gag order. When the insurance industry criticized the Baucus health bill, the response was this week's bill to strip them of their federal antitrust immunity. ("I want you to find this nancy-boy . . . I want him dead! I want his family dead! I want his house burned to the ground!")

This summer Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl criticized stimulus dollars. Obama cabinet secretaries sent letters to Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer. One read: "if you prefer to forfeit the money we are making available to the state, as Senator Kyl suggests," let us know. The Arizona Republic wrote: "Let's not mince words here: The White House is intent on shutting Kyl up . . . using whatever means necessary." When Sens. Robert Bennett and Lamar Alexander took issue with the administration's czars, the White House singled them out, by name, on its blog. Sen. Alexander was annoyed enough to take to the floor this week to warn the White House off an "enemies list."

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor? Targeted for the sin of being a up-and-coming conservative voice. Though even Mr. Cantor was shoved aside in August so the Chicago gang could target at least seven Democratic senators, via the president's campaign arm, Organizing for America, for not doing more on health care. ("What I'm saying is: What are you prepared to do??!!")

And don't forget Fox News Channel ("nothing but a lot of talk and a badge!"). Fox, like MSNBC, has its share of commentators. But according to Obama Communications Director Anita Dunn, the entire network is "opinion journalism masquerading as news." Many previous White House press officers, when faced with criticism, try this thing called outreach. The Chicago crowd has boycotted Fox altogether.

What makes these efforts notable is that they are not the lashing out of a frustrated political operation. They are calculated campaigns, designed to create bogeymen, to divide the opposition, to frighten players into compliance. The White House sees a once-in-a-generation opportunity on health care and climate. It is obsessed with winning these near-term battles, and will take no prisoners. It knows that CEOs are easily intimidated and (Fox News ratings aside) it is getting some of its way. Besides, roughing up conservatives gives the liberal blogosphere something to write about besides Guantanamo.

The Oval Office might be more concerned with the long term. It is 10 months in; more than three long years to go. The strategy to play dirty now and triangulate later is risky. One day, say when immigration reform comes due, the Chamber might come in handy. That is if the Chamber isn't too far gone.

White House targets also aren't dopes. The corporate community is realizing that playing nice doesn't guarantee safety. The health executives signed up for reform, only to remain the president's political piñatas. It surely grates that the unions-now running their own ads against ObamaCare-haven't been targeted. If the choice is cooperate and get nailed, or oppose and possibly win, some might take that bet.

There's also the little fact that many Americans voted for this president in thrall to his vow to bring the country together. It's hard to do that amid gunfire, and voters might just notice.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Quick quiz: What do these enterprises have in common? Farm and construction machinery, Tupperware, the railroads, Hershey sweets, Yum food brands and Yahoo? Answer: They're all more profitable than the health insurance industry. In the health care debate, Democrats and their allies have gone after insurance companies as rapacious profiteers making "immoral" and "obscene" returns while "the bodies pile up."

Ledgers tell a different reality. Health insurance profit margins typically run about 6 percent, give or take a point or two. That's anemic compared with other forms of insurance and a broad array of industries, even some beleaguered ones.

Profits barely exceeded 2 percent of revenues in the latest annual measure. This partly explains why the credit ratings of some of the largest insurers were downgraded to negative from stable heading into this year, as investors were warned of a stagnant if not shrinking market for private plans.

Insurers are an expedient target for leaders who want a government-run plan in the marketplace. Such a public option would force private insurers to trim profits and restrain premiums to compete, the argument goes. This would "keep insurance companies honest," says President Barack Obama.

The debate is loaded with intimations that insurers are less than straight, when they are not flatly accused of malfeasance.

They may not have helped their case by commissioning a report that looked primarily at the elements of health care legislation that might drive consumer costs up while ignoring elements aimed at bringing costs down. Few in the debate seem interested in a true balance sheet.

But in pillorying insurers over profits, the critics are on shaky ground. A look at some claims, and the numbers:

_"I'm very pleased that (Democratic leaders) will be talking, too, about the immoral profits being made by the insurance industry and how those profits have increased in the Bush years." House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who also welcomed the attention being drawn to insurers'"obscene profits."

_"Keeping the status quo may be what the insurance industry wants their premiums have more than doubled in the last decade and their profits have skyrocketed." Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen, member of the Democratic leadership.

_"Health insurance companies are willing to let the bodies pile up as long as their profits are safe." A MoveOn.org ad.

Health insurers posted a 2.2 percent profit margin last year, placing them 35th on the Fortune 500 list of top industries. As is typical, other health sectors did much better - drugs and medical products and services were both in the top 10.

The railroads brought in a 12.6 percent profit margin. Leading the list: network and other communications equipment, at 20.4 percent.

HealthSpring, the best performer in the health insurance industry, posted 5.4 percent. That's a less profitable margin than was achieved by the makers of Tupperware, Clorox bleach and Molson and Coors beers.

The star among the health insurance companies did, however, nose out Jack in the Box restaurants, which only achieved a 4 percent margin.

UnitedHealth Group, reporting third quarter results last week, saw fortunes improve. It managed a 5 percent profit margin on an 8 percent growth in revenue.

Van Hollen is right that premiums have more than doubled in a decade, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation study that found a 131 percent increase.

Not judging by profit margins, profit growth or returns to shareholders. The industry's overall profits grew only 8.8 percent from 2003 to 2008, and its margins year to year, from 2005 forward, never cracked 8 percent.

The latest annual profit margins of a selection of products, services and industries: Tupperware Brands, 7.5 percent; Yahoo, 5.9 percent; Hershey, 6.1 percent; Clorox, 8.7 percent; Molson Coors Brewing, 8.1 percent; construction and farm machinery, 5 percent; Yum Brands (think KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell), 8.5 percent.

SEAN HANNITY, HOST: And tonight in "Your America" over the weekend Massachusetts Senator Teddy Kennedy threw his weight behind the health care proposals that are now under consideration in the House and the Senate writing in Newsweek magazine, he said, quote, "We will bring health care reform to the Senate and House floors soon, and there will be a vote. A century long struggle will reach its climax, and I believe this bill will pass, and we will end the disgrace of America as the only major industrialized nation in the world that doesn't guarantee health care for all of its people."

But Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal is warning that the legislation will have unintended consequences including the fact that most Americans will end up with government-run health care, only the wealthy will have a choice about this, bureaucrats, not patients or doctors, will make choices about your health, and the quality of care will diminish.

HANNITY: All right. That was your rebuttal in the Politico today. Can you go into more specificity and details?

JINDAL: Absolutely. You know, my concerns of the House Democratic plan is, look, you've got a plan that increases deficit spending when we already gave trillion-dollar deficits, as far as the eye can see. You've got a plan that increases taxes on businesses, on those that don't want to participate in this plan, on small businesses and employers as well.

But third and most importantly, you've got a plan that would disrupt the quality by interfering, by inserting the government between providers and their patients. You know it's great whether the president says that you can keep the health care you have if you like it. The problem is that's not what this plan does.

One independent group says as many as 100 million Americans may lose their private coverage, may switch over to the public government-run plan.

You know you've got to give Senator Kennedy this. At least he's honest with what he wants to accomplish. In that Newsweek op-ed he talks about giving up - he said his ideal was always a single payer government run health care system, and I think that's really what's motivating a lot of the proponents of this plan.

But make no mistake about it. This is a radical restructuring of our health care system. You know House Democrats, they've tried to spend, they've tried to borrow our way into prosperity. Now they're trying to tax our way into prosperity, and in the meantime they want to help take over part of our health care system.

The government is already running banks, car companies, now it wants to run our health care system. I think it's a very, very dangerous piece of legislation, and I think we need to slow down, look at the consequences and understand it's higher taxes, higher deficits, worst quality health care for Americans.

HANNITY: Governor, you spell it out very clear in that Teddy Kennedy article really admits something that we conservatives have been pointing out for sometime, and that, in fact, this will result in rationing.

You went on to say, you said, "House Democrats are determined," and you just repeated it here, "to tax and spend our way into prosperity," and then you said our federal government, and I found this truthful, but nobody really having the guts to say it, is just flinging stuff against the wall in trillion-dollar chunks to see what sticks.

Now how frightening is this when it's not our money, it's our children's and grandchildren's money?

JINDAL: Well, that's exactly right. We're borrowing money from China, we're printing money. You look - and you hear what they're actually saying in the Congress. You know they actually say that the government has to participate in the health care marketplace to make it competitive.

When did we start believing that as a country? What's next? Does that mean the government has to start running newspapers and factories and stores?

This is absolutely the wrong way to reform our health care. Obviously we need to bring down costs. Congress' own budget office says this plan will not reduce government healthcare spending. It adds nearly a quarter of a trillion-dollar to the deficits.

Heritage Foundation says we may end up with higher marginal tax rates at the high end, higher than many European countries, many states may be over 50 percent. This isn't the free enterprise system that makes this such a great economy, such a great country.

You know conservatives have a lot of ideas on how we can actually reduce the cost, increase access to health care. Why not listen to some of those ideas? Why aren't we tackling lawsuits, abusive lawsuits? We can save - you know, right now defense and medicine costs as much $100 billion a year.

Why aren't we requiring insurance companies to actually cover those that are sick, allowing small businesses to pool their purchasing power? Why aren't we embracing electronic health care records? Why aren't we doing the kinds of things that actually bring transparency?

Let's provide - let's make providers post prices and outcomes on the Internet so consumers can actually choose. There are things we can actually do that will reduce the cost of health care. Unfortunately the rhetoric we're hearing from House Democrats, from the White House, doesn't match the legislation.

It'd be great if they actually had a plan that did what they said, that was paid for, that actually improved quality, that reduced cost, increased access. Unfortunately the plan doesn't do these things.

HANNITY: Let me ask you this, Governor. One of the things - you outlined everything that the president has up to this point asked for and has gotten, you know, including the stimulus plan and you go through a long laundry list, and then you conclude but taken as a whole what the president has done is devastating.

So my question to you is on a scale of 1 to 10, how devastating is what Barack Obama has done to the economy?

JINDAL: Well, look, the spending is atrocious. At some point you're going to see the value of our dollar go down, you're going to see inflation and interest rate goes up. We've seen this before. You see a debt that's being piled up for our children and grandchildren.

And what scares me about health care, though, that's even more challenging than many things that have come before like the stimulus, the TARP, the auto bailout, and all the other plans - which scares me the most about health care is you're talking about a permanent government involvement, in not only a large part of our economy, but in some of the most important decisions that we as Americans make, those decisions that should be made between American patients and their doctors, not with a government bureaucrat in the room.

HANNITY: All right, Governor. Let me ask you last question. If you were to have an opportunity, and I know you talk to a lot of Republicans around the country, in the House and the Senate, what's your best advice for them? Because I agree with you.

I think this is beyond troubling, I think this will fundamentally alter our free market capitalist system. You're very articulate and passionate. What advice do you give the Republicans? How do they combat this to stop it considering they have both Houses of Congress and the White House?

JINDAL: Two things. One, let's not be fooled by the rhetoric. Let's force them to actually do what they say. Let's force them to actually allow Americans to keep what they have. Let's not be raising taxes during a recession, let's not be adding to the deficit, let's not let the government take over.

And you know, the good news, as you're beginning to see some conservative Democrats begin to express concerns about the impact this will have on the economy, on our health care system.

Secondly, we've got to offer proactive solutions. There are things we believe in that involve things like refundable tax credits to help people buy portable insurance they can carry from job to job across state lines. Let's offer alternative solutions, but let's force the Democrats to live up to their rhetoric. Their plans don't do that.

WASHINGTON - Late last month, the senior White House adviser David Axelrod and Roger Ailes, chairman and chief executive of Fox News, met in an empty Palm steakhouse before it opened for the day, neutral ground secured for a secret tête-à-tête.

Roger Ailes reached out to David Axelrod to address rising tensions between Fox News and the White House.

Mr. Ailes, who had reached out to Mr. Axelrod to address rising tensions between the network and the White House, told him that Fox's reporters were fair, if tough, and should be considered separate from the Fox commentators who were skewering President Obama nightly, according to people briefed on the meeting. Mr. Axelrod said it was the view of the White House that Fox News had blurred the line between news and anti-Obama advocacy.

What both men took to be the start of a frank but productive dialogue proved, in retrospect, more akin to the round of pre-Pearl Harbor peace talks between the United States and Japan.

By the following weekend, officials at the White House had decided that if anything, it was time to take the relationship to an even more confrontational level. The spur: Executives at other news organizations, including The New York Times, had publicly said that their newsrooms had not been fast enough in following stories that Fox News, to the administration's chagrin, had been heavily covering through the summer and early fall - namely, past statements and affiliations of the White House adviser Van Jones that ultimately led to his resignation and questions surrounding the community activist group Acorn.

At the same time, Fox News had continued a stream of reports rankling White House officials and liberal groups that monitor its programming for bias.

Those reports included a critical segment on the schools safety official Kevin Jennings, with the on-screen headline "School Czar's Past May Be Too Radical"; urgent news coverage of a video showing schoolchildren "singing the praises, quite literally, of the president," which the Fox News contributor Tucker Carlson later called "pure Khmer Rouge stuff"; and the daily anti-Obama salvos from Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity.

There followed, beginning in earnest more than two weeks ago, an intensified volley of White House comments describing Fox as "not a news network."

"It was an amalgam of stories covered, and our assessment of how others were dealing with those stories, that caused us to comment," Mr. Axelrod said in describing the administration's thinking.

The heated back-and-forth between the White House and Fox News has brought equal delight to Fox's conservative commentators, who revel in the fight, and liberal Democrats, who have long characterized the network as a purveyor of right-wing propaganda rather than fact-based journalism.

Speaking privately at the White House on Monday with a group of mostly liberal columnists and commentators, including Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann of MSNBC and Maureen Dowd, Frank Rich and Bob Herbert of The New York Times, Mr. Obama himself gave vent to sentiments about the network, according to people briefed on the conversation.

Then, in an interview with NBC News on Wednesday, the president went public. "What our advisers have simply said is that we are going to take media as it comes," he said. "And if media is operating, basically, as a talk radio format, then that's one thing. And if it's operating as a news outlet, then that's another."

In a sign of discomfort with the White House stance, Fox's television news competitors refused to go along with a Treasury Department effort on Tuesday to exclude Fox from a round of interviews with the executive-pay czar Kenneth R. Feinberg that was to be conducted with a "pool" camera crew shared by all the networks. That followed a pointed question at a White House briefing this week by Jake Tapper, an ABC News correspondent, about the administration's treatment of "one of our sister organizations."

White House officials continue to interact with Fox News correspondents whom they have complimented as professional, including Major Garrett and Wendell Goler.

But Michael Clemente, senior vice president for news and editorial programming at Fox, said the White House was conflating the network's commentary with its news coverage. That, Mr. Clemente said, "would be like Fox News blaming the White House senior staff for the Washington Redskins' losing record."

"I think we're doing the job we're supposed to be doing," he said, "and we do it as well as anyone."

Mr. Clemente suggested that the fight was part of a larger White House strategy to marginalize critics. He cited a report in Politico about a strategy session in August at which officials discussed plans to move more aggressively against opponents.

White House officials acknowledged that Fox News did come up at that meeting, although not, they said, as a central topic. A number of issues had been added to the White House's list of grievances by then, including the network's heavy coverage of some of the more intensely anti-administration activity at town-hall-style meetings on health care and Mr. Beck's remark that Mr. Obama "has a deep-seated hatred for white people."

The first real shot from the White House, however, came when aides excluded "Fox News Sunday With Chris Wallace" - which they had previously treated as distinct from the network - from a round of presidential interviews with Sunday morning news programs in mid-September.

"We simply decided to stop abiding by the fiction, which is aided and abetted by the mainstream press, that Fox is a traditional news organization," said Dan Pfeiffer, the deputy White House communications director. Later that week, White House officials said, they noticed a column by Clark Hoyt, the public editor of The Times, in which Jill Abramson, one of the paper's two managing editors, described her newsroom's "insufficient tuned-in-ness to the issues that are dominating Fox News and talk radio." The Washington Post's executive editor, Marcus Brauchli, had already expressed similar concerns about his newsroom.

White House officials said comments like those had focused them on a need to make their case that Fox had an ideological bent undercutting its legitimacy as a news organization.

Fox News Channel certainly seems to be enjoying a row it considers ratings candy, having devoted hours of news coverage and commentary to the fight.

But White House officials said they were happy to have at least started a public debate about Fox.

"This is a discussion that probably had to be had about their approach to things," Mr. Axelrod said. "Our concern is other media not follow their lead."

I will admit that I am suspicious about anything that his present government does. Over and over again, they say one thing, and do something entirely different. The President talks about fiscal responsibility and controlling the deficit, but does just the exact opposite. Right now, there is a bill which seems to be running under the radar called Net Neutrality. As I understand it, the government will step in to regulate something which is a fairly minor problem (those who are using bit torrents to download movies and music from the internet are having their bandwidth restricted), but, in this bill, gain the power to later exercise a great deal of power. It is the camel’s nose under the tent, something that this administration is becoming famous for:

The White House picked out the correct wardrobe for Sotomayor to wear...is a wise Latina judge unable to do this for herself?

Since it appears that Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Creigh Deeds will lose the election, the White House is beginning to distance itself from Deeds, indicating that he has been ignoring White House campaign advice.

Japanese build tiny nuclear reactors to sell to the United States. Why aren’t we doing this?

Rules for Presidents (a takeoff of Rules for Radicals). James Taranto on the president:

MSNBC proclaims itself as the #1 cable news station, since FoxNews is not a cable news outlet; you decide if this is a tongue-in-cheek promo or not:

Inside Story video about how global warming is disproportionately affecting Africa. One of the guests is asked, “Is their demand for $65 billion reasonable?” and they answer, “Yes.”

The impact of the economic stimulus bill is going to level off in 2010 (according to Christina Romer):

RUSH: I want to take you back to July 23rd of this year. I was on Greta Van Susteren's show On the Record on Fox News Channel, and in light of a headline that's out there today, the AP, Tom Raum, the State-Controlled reporter for AP: "Higher Jobless Rates Could Be the New Normal." That's right. The new norms are all over the place, and they're horrible, and they're rotten, and we have to accept these high jobless rates could be the new normal. This is what I told Greta Van Susteren back on July 23rd.

RUSH ARCHIVE: This is not about health care, it's about control, it's remaking the country, the economy, proof of my point here that the joblessness is on purpose. If your number one signature issue is health care, and his is, and if, which is true that health insurance is not portable when you lose your job, what's the best thing you could do for yourself? Create unemployment. The more people unemployed, the more people losing their health insurance, the more people scared to death, the more people clamoring for it, "Please save my health insurance, please give me health insurance." I'm scared because they've been drummed into the fact that there's something in this country killing them every day from coffee to nicotine to whatever it is, so all of this destruction is taking place, redistribution of wealth. He wants to return the nation's wealth to its rightful owners.

RUSH: And I said that "rightful owners" meaning redistribute from the achievers to the non-achievers. And so here we are today, from the AP, approvingly: "'Higher Jobless Rates Could Be the New Normal' -- Even with an economic revival --" which is not happening and isn't going to happen any time soon. "-- many US jobs lost during the recession may be gone forever and a weak employment market could linger for years. That could add up to a 'new normal' of higher joblessness and lower standards of living for many Americans, some economists are suggesting," and the AP is approvingly reporting this. "The words 'it's different this time' are always suspect. But economists and policy makers say the job-creating dynamics of previous recoveries can't be counted on now. Here's why: The auto and construction industries helped lead the nation out of past recessions. But the carnage among Detroit's automakers and the surplus of new and foreclosed homes and empty commercial properties make it unlikely these two industries will be engines of growth anytime soon."

Well, who owns the auto business? Who's running the US car industry? Who destroyed the US housing industry? Who is running the US banking industry? Barack Hussein Obama, mmm, mmm, hmm. "The auto and construction industries helped lead the nation out of past recessions. But the carnage among Detroit's automakers and the surplus of new and foreclosed homes --" Who's running out of this? The administration of Barack Hussein Obama. Also in this story it is mentioned that there is a new reluctance here to spend money among higher income families. Now, why would that be? Why would higher income families suddenly be reluctant to spend? They're coming after us, that's why. They're coming after us and we are trying to hold onto what we've got for as long as we can before they find a way to take it from us, as Obama seeks to return the nation's wealth to its rightful owners.

You go back to May of 2008 for some historical perspective. Here's some excerpts from an article, from an outraged AP. They're approving of this whole concept, higher jobless rates could be the new normal. In fact, the AP is furthering the Obama administration's line, "Hey get used to it, this is your new country, and most of you are going to be impoverished, lower middle class and out of work depending on us. This is your new country," and AP happily proffers that notion on you. But go back to May of 2008 when guess who was still in office: "Employers cut far fewer jobs in April than in recent months and the unemployment rate dropped to 5 percent, a better-than-expected showing that nonetheless reveals strains in the nation's labor market. For the fourth month in a row, the economy lost jobs, the Labor Department reported Friday. But in April the losses totaled 20,000, an improvement from the 81,000 reductions in payrolls logged in March. . The unemployment rate, derived from a different statistical survey than the payroll figures, fell to 5 percent from 5.1 percent in March. That survey showed more people finding employment than those who didn't."

Now, lest we forget, 5% unemployment was considered full employment during the salad days of the Clinton years. Yet in May of 2008, the AP tried to paint it as the harbinger of a second Great Depression and they spent two years trying to convince the American people that we were in the throes of a recession, that it was worse than we had ever seen in the last 50 years, the economy was plunging and it was Bush's fault, and it was the fault of the Iraq war. And unemployment when they were making this point was 5%. Today, it's approaching 10%, and the AP tells us, get used to it, you dupes, get used to it, you schlubs, get used to it, you serfs, because your time is up. Right here I'm holding it in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers, "Higher Jobless Rates Could Be New Normal." Folks, they are telling you it's over. Get used to it. They've accepted it in Europe, we've gotta learn to accept it here. We are Europeanizing ourselves right before our very eyes. They've accepted it there, we've gotta learn to accept it here.

Now, there's interesting juxtaposition of news stories with this AP headline: "Higher Jobless Rates Could Be New Normal." Right under it is this little headline: "Apple Profits Up 47% on iPhone Craze." Now, what positioning, on the one hand, an excuse for Obama, "Oh, jobless rate normal, gotta get used to this." Right below it the results of entrepreneurial nongovernment efforts during a recession! During a recession. Apple shares soar on earnings report. Mac and iPhone sales soar. I wonder if the administration's going to call Steve Jobs and say this is not fair, you're doing too well during this recession. We're going to have to penalize you, this is not right, it's not fair you're doing this well when other people aren't. They're doing increased sales in a recession, the evidence right before our eyes of how to come out of this, right before our eyes. And Apple, even though they're big libs, even though they're big contributors to Obama, Apple, before the day is over, it's got its cult-like fans, "How can this be happening? This is not right."

"Apple Inc. said Monday that record sales of Macintosh computers and iPhones lifted its quarterly profit and revenue, which trounced Wall Street's forecasts. Shares of Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) rose 7% after hours, at one point hitting an all-time trading high of $204. The previous high in regular trading was $202, set nearly two years ago. . IPhone sales climbed 7% to a record 7.4 million in Apple's fiscal fourth quarter. That rate could increase as Apple introduces the iPhone to China later this month. . 'We are thrilled to have sold more Macs and iPhones than in any previous quarter,' Steve Jobs, Apple's chief executive, said in a statement. 'We've got a very strong lineup for the holiday season and some really great new products in the pipeline for 2010.'"

Now, I'm a Mac guy, but I still love these stories not because I'm a Mac guy. Because the story is proof if you make a product that people want, and you make it better than anybody else, you can make a profit even in a recession. And you don't have to lay people off even in a recession. No unions, no Cash for Clunkers, no tax rebate for hybrids, no government intervention, no stimulus, just a good product that means big profits. I won't be surprised if it's somewhere leaked that Obama and the Democrats say this is evil and unfair and try to put a stop to this. This is the old economy on display. Apple Computer, even though they're a high-tech bunch, represents the, quote, unquote, old economy, the American exceptional economy on display, juxtapositioned right against a falling, flailing, failing, embarrassing Obama America and Obama economy. And then to add to it, we finally get the truth out of this administration. Yesterday at a meeting of the Middle Class Task Force, Vice President Biden spoke.

BIDEN: My grandpop used to say -- there was a suburb of Scranton called Minooka. He said, "When the guy in Minooka's out of work, it's an economic slowdown. When your brother-in-law's out of work, it's a recession. When you're out of work, it's a depression," Well, it's a depression -- it's a depression for millions of Americans.

RUSH: All right, so they finally admit the truth, Joe Biden, "It's a depression." Now, he's telling the truth here, but I got a little chart here, ladies and gentlemen, that is just amazing, that shows job creation and job loss since the middle of 2004. The administration's running, wait, we've turned our backs, the recession's over, yeah, the recession's over and we're headed worse, we're into depression. And the vice president of the United States is out there saying so. New York Times headline, October 16th: "By Some Reliable Measures, Recession Is Over." Exactly right. Now we're into depression. Total nonfarm payrolls all employees, US Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, number of jobs in the US last five years through September '09, it starts in mid-2004, and it looks like 132 million people working in the middle of 2004. When you go to the peak right at the end of 2007 we are at 138 million Americans working. That's seven million jobs created between the middle of 2004 and the end of 2008. Today, we have lost every job that was created from the summer of 2004 through the end of 2007. We have lost every job in just a year-and-a-half. This is Michigan.

The United States has become Michigan in its trend lines, and the United States is prepared to duplicate what Jennifer Granholm has done: raise taxes again, foist new programs that cannot be paid for, rack up more debt. It can't be because these people don't get it. It can't be because these people don't understand what they're doing. It can't be because they have good intentions. None of those things are true. It is happening because we have people running this country who think it's about time we got ours and live like the rest of the world does because we have been stealing from the rest of the world for our lifestyles and our living standards. It's about time we got cut down to size and get used to it because these unemployment levels, according to the Associated Press, very approvingly, are the new norms.

RUSH: Get this. Talking about the redistribution of wealth: "The rush to implement a tax credit for first-time home buyers opened the program up to potential fraud by people who hadn't bought a home or already owned one, Congress was told yesterday. J. Russell George, Treasury inspector general for tax administration, questioned the eligibility of some 100,000 claims out of the 1.5 million who have sought to take advantage of the $8,000 tax credit incorporated in the economic stimulus package enacted last February," which yesterday Christina Romer said, "We've already seen the big gang for the buck that we're going to get from it."

"He said that claimants include those who could possibly be illegal immigrants and that 580 people seeking $4 million from the first-time home buyer credit were under the age of 18. The youngest taxpayers receiving the credit were 4 years old, his office said." A four-year-old taxpayer? "George and an Internal Revenue Service official testifying before a House Ways and Means subcommittee stressed that many of the questioned claims may be deemed legitimate after further examination. But the hearing raised a yellow flag as Congress considers whether to extend, or even expand, the popular program ..." Snerdley, is that I program where they actually get a check? "The top Republican on the panel, Representative Charles W. Boustany Jr. of Louisiana, said that while the issue of extending the credit was not the purpose of the hearing, 'every time Congress creates a new refundable credit ... the incentive for fraud is magnified.'" They get a check. That's why I think... These people, it's not something you check off on your income tax. These people are getting a check for eight grand! "Hi. I'm from the government. I'm buying your vote. Here's eight grand."

RUSH: Now, this next story is equally as infuriating as the AP story. It sounds complicated but it's really not. Let me see if I can once again (as I always do) make the complex understandable here. Here's the headline from the Washington Times: "Justice Department Concludes that Black Voters Need the Democrat Party." The story is from North Carolina, a little town called Kinston. "Voters in this small city decided overwhelmingly last year..." By the way Kinston is two-thirds black. Keep that in mind as I run through the details here. "Voters in this small city decided overwhelmingly last year to do away with the party affiliation of candidates in local elections," It's two-thirds black, one-third white, they voted 65% to do away with party affiliation to local elections. In other words, they have no Democrats or Republican identification on the ballot.

Just the candidates' names. That's not good enough for the Obama administration. The Obama administration and the attorney general, Eric Holder, have "recently overruled the electorate" in Kinston, North Carolina, "and decided that equal rights for black voters cannot be achieved without the Democratic Party." They are worried that whites will not vote for blacks unless it is said that they are Democrats in this county. This is what this all can get boiled down to. "The Justice Department's ruling, which affects races for City Council and mayor, went so far as to say partisan elections are needed so that black voters can elect their 'candidates of choice' -- identified by the department as those who are Democrats..."

They are essentially saying at the Justice Department that black voters don't have the sense to understand who they're voting for, don't have any idea how to identify people they want to support unless the word "Democrat" is attached to their name. "The department ruled that white voters in Kinston will vote for blacks only if they are Democrats and that therefore the city cannot get rid of party affiliations for local elections because that would violate black voters' right to elect the candidates they want." So the Obama Justice Department has decided to insult nationally and brazenly the black population of Kinston, North Carolina. They are in effect saying, "No, no, no! You guys down there you cannot do this. Even though you voted 65% to get rid of party affiliation in local elections, you can't do it. You're going to have to identify who the Democrats are otherwise the black people won't know who to vote for."

RUSH: Another tape has surfaced of another Obama official praising Mao Tse-tung. Let's first go back to June the 5th. We had this for you last Friday. This is Anita Dunn, White House communications director at a high school graduation at the Washington National Cathedral.

DUNN: The third lesson and tip actually come from two of my favorite political philosophers: Mao Tse-tung and Mother Teresa. Not often coupled with each other. In 1947, when Mao Tse-tung was being challenged within his own party on his plan to basically take China over, the Nationalist Chinese helped the cities, they had the army, they had the Air Force, they had everything on their side. And people said, "How can you win? How can you do this? How can you do this? Against all the odds against you?" And Mao Tse-tung said, "You fight your war and I'll fight mine," and think about that for a second.

RUSH: I've seen this clip aired on television, and I've seen the noted pundit class commenting on this, and they're saying, "Well, uh, umm, Anita Dunn, she is what she is, but certainly she's not endorsing the policies of Mao Tse-tung! I mean, he killed 30 million Chinese in his revolution, certainly... I mean we -- we -- certainly she doesn't -- she doesn't mean it." Let me just put it to you this way. Can you think of any other administration in this country where a president or a communications specialist or anybody else would run around and start praising Mao Tse-tung as a role model, as a philosopher to follow? Can you think of any administration who would have previously cited Stalin or Lenin or Castro? This administration idolizes all these people! I'm not suggesting they're mass murderers. I'm saying they envy the total control, the tyrannical control that Mao Tse-tung had. "You fight your battles and I'll fight mine." We've got another one to add to the list now. This is the manufacturing czar, Ron Bloom. He was the car czar but he's moved over to manufacturing now. He called the free market "nonsense." This is February 2008 in New York City, the sixth annual Distressed Investing Forum, and he was special assistant on the president of the United Steelworkers Union at the time. He's now the White House manufacturing czar, Ron Bloom.

BLOOM: We get the joke. We know that the free market is nonsense. We know that the whole point is to game the system, to beat the market or at least find someone who will pay you a lot of money because they're convinced that there is a free lunch. We know this is largely about power, that it's an adults-only, no-limit game. We kind of agree with Mao that political "power comes largely from the barrel of a gun."

RUSH: Now, he's speaking as a union guy there but he's now the manufacturing czar at the White House. So you got two high-ranking White House officials citing their appreciation for and respect for the philosophies of Mao Tse-tung. It is happening! And I'll tell you what really amuses me at times is people, when they hear about this. "Does Obama know who these people are?" (snorts) Obama is Anita Dunn! Obama is Ron Bloom! Obama is Van Jones! Obama is Mark Lloyd! Obama is ACORN! You think these people just accidentally got chosen to serve in this administration. Obama is these people! He gets to go out there and portray himself as Mr. Perfect. He always smiles. He never ever does anything wrong. He never commits one faux pas. He never loses his cool. He never says radical things. He's the public face of centrism and moderation, and yet the people doing his dirty work are the same radicals that he is.

He is a radical. It's there for everyone to discover. Some people just don't want to believe it. So Anita Dunn, praising Mao Tse-tung, is telling us that since Obama now has the army in the cities, we should act like Mao to overtake them? Is that what she's saying? I mean, if we followed Mao, what would we be doing now, Ms. Dunn? If you believed in Mao Tse-tung, "You fight your war, I'll fight mine," okay. You guys have the cities, and you have the guns, so does the rest of what you believe in Mao Tse-tung now follow? You roll into these cities with the guns and you just finally take over? Why don't you just outlaw the Republican Party? Why not just rewrite the Constitution and require redistribution of wealth? Just shut down Fox News and talk radio. Just shut it down like Hugo Chavez is doing! Shut it down. You'd have a lot of people standing up and applauding for you. National Football League would be happy if you did it. Afghan elections, fraudulent? Does that mean that Carville took an ACORN representative with him over there in August to run that campaign?

RUSH: Do you remember the story yesterday we had about how Reuters, CNN, the Washington Post, and New York Times fell for a hoax? Yesterday we thought that it was just an e-mail hoax that they fell for. The hoax was perpetrated by some group that as a practice perpetrates hoaxes on the media. (interruption) Is that the name of the group? Yes Men. And they sent an e-mail out claiming that they were the Chamber of Commerce, that they had done a 180 and Chamber of Commerce was now ready to join Obama on cap and trade, and it was false. It was a total hoax. They didn't check it; they didn't backtrack it; they didn't track it down; they didn't source it; they just accepted the e-mail. Folks, we learn today it's even worse. They had a press conference. The hoax group had a press conference. Yesterday in Washington, the National Press Club, US Chamber of Commerce Director of Communications Eric Wohlschlegel interrupted a fake press conference being held by a man calling himself Hingo Sembra, purportedly with the Chamber. You'll also hear an unidentified reporter in this bit.

WOHLSCHLEGEL: I'm with the US Chamber of Commerce. This is not an official US Chamber of Commerce event, so I don't know under what pretenses you're here. I know some of you in the press world, but this is a fraudulent press activity and a stunt.

WOHLSCHLEGEL: So, if you have any questions, you're welcome to direct them to me at the US Chamber of Commerce. This guy does not represent the US Chamber of Commerce.

WOHLSCHLEGEL: Yeah. Got it. So they're misrepresenting the US Chamber of Commerce.

WOHLSCHLEGEL: If anyone has any questions, you want to talk to the real Chamber of Commerce, they can direct -- direct your questions to me.

RUSH: Can I translate this for you here? There's a fake press conference from somebody claiming to be from the US Chamber of Commerce and they're not. The real Chamber of Commerce communications director shows up and says, "This guy is not who he says he is, he doesn't represent the Chamber, I do." The reporter says, "Shut up, we got a deadline, I need to finish asking this guy questions." Unidentified reporters wanted to continue talking to the hoaxer. Unidentified reporters wanted proof from the Chamber of Commerce guy that he was the real Chamber of Commerce guy. This is amazing. They're in the middle of being hoaxed and they want to continue to fall for the hoax because the hoaxer is telling them what they want to hear. The hoaxer is saying, "I'm from the Chamber and we have turned around, we're going to support cap and trade." That's what the media wanted to hear in the press conference. The real Chamber of Commerce guy, "This is a fraud, this guy is not speaking for the Chamber of Commerce. If you want to know anything about it, talk to me." "Well, wait a minute, shut up, I'm on a deadline here, I want to finish my questions to the guy."

Once again words escape me. Words escape me. I know this is funny, and I know it's hilarious, but it has horrible portends. In just a matter of a week we have seen mainstream media accept total lies, total fabricated quotes made up about me. Now we see mainstream media preferring to talk to a hoax leader of the Chamber of Commerce, a hoaxer, rather than talk to the real communications director of the Chamber of Commerce. And this is in the midst of Len Downie saying, "Oh, we're in trouble here in the news business," and the New York Times laying off a hundred more people in the newsroom -- that's 200 people, by the way, in the last year -- "oh, we're in big trouble here in the news business, we need to go nonprofit, we can't earn a profit." I wonder why the hell that might be, Mr. Downie. It's because your business is now populated with a bunch of idiot boob fools. Holy smokes, folks, it's just mind-blowing.

CALLER: You betcha. Hey, this whole bit about the news and why the news is losing money these days? It's not news; it's propaganda. Outright government propaganda and people just simply aren't going to pay for the lies, misrepresentation, and fraud. The whole thing --

RUSH: Let me ask you a question, then. Let's use the New York Times as an example. New York City has eight million people, about 7.9 million of them liberal. How in the world can the New York Times' journalism be disappointing the liberal Mecca of this country? I'm not... It's just a think piece. I just want your thoughts on this. I can understand where you live in Tucson you're going to have a much greater cross section of conservatives and liberals and so if the conservatives get fed up with the liberalism of the Tucson papers, bam! You're going to and so are a lot of other people. But I don't know that people are not buying the New York Times because it's not liberal enough or because it's too liberal or because it's not anti-conservative enough. I don't know. You tell me.

CALLER: I'll tell you easily. It's a matter of slant. Slant is a way and perspective of seeing things, and it is a matter of them being able to listen to the propaganda they want to hear.

RUSH: Wait a minute. Have you ever read letters to the editor of the New York Times?

RUSH: Well, every damn one of them is far more radical, wacko, and leftist than the people who work there!

RUSH: They love the slant of the New York Times, whatever it is -- editorial page front page, no difference any more -- and yet the New York Times is losing circulation. And the New York Times is losing advertising revenue. Now, also this Little Pinch went out and spent a lot of New York Times money building a monument to himself, the new Times building. They've got some debt problems there and they invested in the Boston Red Sox a little bit and they bought the Boston Globe. But I don't know that the Times is in trouble because of its content because 99% of its market loves its content. So there's gotta be something else going on with the Times: Bad business decisions, operating decisions and so forth.

Reuters sends out this false story, and the Washington Post and the NY Times post it to their websites before finding out it is a hoax:

RUSH: Our country is being dismantled right before our very eyes. People on our side want to play like this is just politics as usual. Yeah, Democrats won the election, yeah, they had the right implement their policies. Have you looked at what the policies are? Have you looked at what the ultimate objective of the policies is? I don't see any opposition to this in the Republican Party. I look at this and I just feel powerless to stop any of this. I'm just a guy on the radio, powerless to stop any of this. I'm sure that you do, too, then I come across stories like this and I just laugh myself silly except this is going to happen, too. The Associated Press reporting: "Journalism is at risk, and American society must act to preserve it." That's a key message in a new report coauthored by Len Downie, the former executive editor of the Washington Post. "In a paper commissioned by the Columbia University Journalism School, the ex-Post editor, Len Downie, and Michael Schudson, a Columbia professor, argue the government, universities and nonprofit foundations should step in as newspapers suffer financially. The authors recommend that the Internal Revenue Service or Congress ensure the tax code allows local news outlets to operate as nonprofits."

Change the tax code to let the news business become nonprofit. They "urge philanthropic organizations to support local reporting. They suggest the Federal Communications Commission establish a fund using fees from telecommunications companies or Internet providers for grants to innovative local news groups." This is all about a panic that has settled in, the news business cannot sustain itself anymore, "We don't want bailouts, we don't want bailouts, no, no. We just want universities and philanthropic organizations, rich foundations to endow journalism and make it a nonprofit concern," for the express purpose of having it controlled all the way down to the local news level. Don't be fooled by all this talk about how it's necessary to preserve local news reporting. This is about controlling the media on every level, especially on the national level, and this is how they intend to do it.

RUSH: "An environmental writer mainstreams an idea floating around the green fringe -- save the earth by population control and give carbon credits to one-child families. Are we threatened by the patter of little carbon footprints? It's long been a mantra on the left that people are a plague on the earth, ravaging its surface for food and resources, polluting its atmosphere and endangering its species. Now we are endangering its very climate to the point of extinction. Even the result of our breathing -- carbon dioxide -- has been declared by the EPA to be a dangerous pollutant. Treaties like Kyoto and the upcoming economic suicide pact to be forged in Copenhagen have focused on the instruments and byproducts of our civilization.

"Now the focus is shifting increasingly to the people who built it. New York Times environmental writer Andrew Revkin participated in an Oct. 14 panel discussion on climate change with other media pundits titled 'Covering Climate: What's Population Got To Do With It?' People who need people they are not. Participating via webcam, Revkin volunteered that in allocating carbon credits as part of any cap-and-trade scheme, 'if you can measurably somehow divert fertility rate, say toward accelerating decline in a place with a high fertility rate, shouldn't there be a carbon value to that?' He went on to say that 'probably the single most concrete and substantive thing an American, young American, could do to lower our carbon footprint is not turning off the light or driving a Prius, it's having fewer kids, having fewer children.'

"'More children equal more carbon dioxide emissions,' [the New York Times environmental writer] blogged, wondering 'whether this means we'll soon see a market in baby-avoidance carbon credits similar to efforts to sell CO2 credits for avoiding deforestation.'" There is a country that has such a policy, the one child policy and vigorously endorses it. That's the ChiComs. And do we not have a White House communications director who considers mass murderer Mao Tse-tung her favorite philosopher? "This brave new world is not too far-fetched for science adviser John Holdren, who has advised taking population control to quite another level. He has at various times advocated forced abortion and sterilization and views people as a burden, not as the ultimate resource," on the planet, "as we do," the rest of us do.

This is an editorial here from the Investor's Business Daily: "Cap and Trade for Babies." It's coming, folks. They're going to offer young couples carbon credits for only having one child. The theory is that human beings are polluting and destroying the planet. Now, Paul Ehrlich wrote about this back in the seventies in The Population Bomb. It's been totally disapproved, discredited. This has been part of the militant environmental extreme for years, and here now the people who can make it a reality are running the country. They are in the White House. They want a one-child-per-family policy. Now, this is still a fringe movement. But so at one time was the movement to get rid of SUVs.

But like everything else in the militant environmentalist wacko community, I believe this is going to happen someday. Once they get these ideas, they don't give them up. They've been working on this since 1976, and now we got Anita Dunn, who sings the praises of the great "philosopher" Mao Tse-tung in the White House. Ten years ago I wouldn't have believed it, but I didn't think the government would tell me what kind of food I could and couldn't eat or what kind of car I could drive, either. Nor did I believe that we would ever someday have a "pay czar" taking salaries back from people he doesn't approve of. But all these things have happen. So now they're floating the idea, "Cap and Trade for Babies," a New York Times environmental writer in a panel about this.

RUSH: I want to go back to this editorial in the Investors Business Daily in which the New York Times environmental writer Andrew Revkin participated in a panel six days ago, panel discussion on climate change with other media pundits, and it was called "Covering Climate: What's Population Got to Do With It?" The lefties have been positing the notion -- I first heard it in the seventies when Paul Ehrlich came out with The Population Bomb that too many people, not enough resources, not enough food, we're all going to die, we gotta limit population. It's now gotten to the point that what we exhale, carbon dioxide, is the biggest pollutant on the planet and is destroying the planet and we're going to be in trouble, and they believe that humanity is the greatest scourge on the earth anyway, it's destroying other species, it's destroying resources, and now it's destroying the planet.

So the purpose of this panel discussion was to eventually come up with a plan to limit the number of children American couples can have by offering them carbon credits for children not had. Revkin said, in allocating carbon credits for not having kids as part of any cap-and-trade scheme, he said, "if you can measurably somehow divert fertility rate, say toward an accelerating decline in a place with a high fertility rate, shouldn't there be a carbon value to that?" He went on to say that "probably the single-most concrete and substantive thing an American, young American, could do to lower our carbon footprint is not turning off the lights or driving a Prius, it's having fewer kids, having fewer children." More children equal more carbon dioxide emissions. Now, I've been thinking about this during the commercial break because I take these people seriously. They are lunatics but they are dangerous. I take these people seriously.

If we're going to do this, and this is going to happen, just like you thought I was off my rocker back in 1997 when I told you they were going to come after your SUV, I've warned you every aspect of this leftist agenda is coming. "Rush, that will never happen." I never thought there would be a pay czar, but it's happened. I never thought that we'd have governments telling us what we can and can't eat. I never thought any of this stuff would happen, but it's happening. This is going to happen. It's still a fringe movement, but it's going to happen. But two things about this: What defines a couple? Is it marriage? I mean a lot of people have kids today that are not married. Do you realize the scheme that is waiting here? Do you realize all women, regardless of age from about 13 on could argue that they should be paid every nine months for not having a baby because they're saving the planet. Well, whatever puberty is, 13 on, once puberty hits and you can have a baby every nine months, and you don't do it, can you get a carbon credit, can you get an allowance, can you get whatever they're going to pay you for not doing this?

We don't even have to talk about getting married. We don't even have to talk about being a couple. I mean men have no say now, really, in whether a child is born or not, legally I mean. So would a man have any way of benefiting from the carbon credit? A man cannot give birth, women can give birth without a man around, many of them prefer to do so, they work in the Obama administration, too, but that's another thing. The second aspect -- seriously, you gotta think this way because this is where these people are coming from. And as I said, what about homosexuals? They never have babies. No wonder the New York Times is all for this. Think of the financial windfall the homosexuals, who never have babies, they can say we are single-handedly doing more than anybody to save the planet. We should be paid whatever mass sum. The militant gay community, "Tax the breeders. We are saving the planet." Where does this stop?

But here's another observation. I think these militant environmentalists, these wackos, have so much in common with the jihad guys. Let me explain this. What do the jihad guys do? The jihad guys go to families under their control and they convince these families to strap explosives on who? Not them. On their kids. Grab their three-year-old, grab your four-year-old, grab your six-year-old, and we're going to strap explosives on, and then we're going to send you on a bus or we're going to send you into a shopping center and we're going to tell you when to pull the trigger and you're going to blow up and you're going to blow up everybody around you and you're going to head up to wherever you're going, the 73 virgins are going to be there, the little three or four-year-old doesn't have the presence of mind to say, "Well what about you? If it's so great up there why don't you go? Why don't you strap explosives on?" And their parents don't have the guts to tell the jihad guys, "You do it. Why do you want my kid to go blow himself up?" The jihad guys will just shoot 'em because the jihad guys have to maintain control.

The environmentalist wackos are the same way. This guy from the New York Times, if he really thinks that humanity is destroying the planet, humanity is destroying the climate, that human beings in their natural existence are going to cause the extinction of life on earth, Andrew Revkin, Mr. Revkin, why don't you just go kill yourself and help the planet by dying? Why do you want every one of us except you and your buddies on the left? See, liberals always come up with these laws, these plans, these solutions, and they're always for everybody else. You go and limit the number of kids you have. You go drive a Yugo. You go get rid of your big house. You go turn your thermostat up or down, you go do this, you go do that. But I, Barack Obama, I'm going to throw big parties every night in the White House, I'm going to bring in Earth, Wind & Fire, I'm going to bring in Charlie Pride. This is happening. They're having gigs at the White House. Drudge has a story, Earth, Wind & Fire, a bunch of people coming in they're having big parties, Obama's playing basketball. I saw a picture today Obama's basketballs are logoed with his logo on them. I kid you not. Yes, they are. Yes, they are. I got a picture of that circle with the three red lines, the rip-off of the Pepsi logo, his basketballs are logoed.

Somebody who's made basketballs has made up a bunch with Obama's logo on them. It's no big deal. I have the EIB logo on my golf balls. No big deal, but anyway, he's out there playing basketball while everything is going to hell in a handbasket because of his policies and he's still living high on the hog with $100-a-pound Kobe beef, throwing all these parties, flying off to Paris, New York, London, for dates with Michelle (My Belle) and, meanwhile, you can't find a job and you're told your unemployment is now going to be normal, this level of unemployment is now normal, AP put the news out today. So they come up with all these policies, but they're for everybody else but them. Same as the jihad guys, the jihad guys never strap explosives on themselves, the jihad leaders never get on a bus, blow themselves up along with everybody else on it and then seek the 73 virgins or whatever the come-on is. But they have three and four, five, six-year-olds do it.

It's not just the environmentalists that have a lot in common with the jihad guys. And just as the families in these Palestinian and Hezbollah camps and so forth never say to the jihad guys, "Why don't you do it? If it's so damn good, if this is how we advance our movement, if this is how we get rid of the Jews, if this is how we get freedom, if this is how we get our state, why don't you blow yourself up?" By the same token, nobody in this country says, "Obama, why don't you park Air Force One and drive where you're going? Why don't you start serving ground chuck instead of serving Kobe beef at your parties? Why don't you hire a karaoke machine instead of Earth, Wind & Fire?" Nobody ever says that. Nobody says to any of these liberals conjuring up all these policies, "Show us leadership, you do it first. You put some thermostat in your house where the power company gets to control it, you do it." Just like the jihad guys. Because what do they have in common? They're all tyrannical, power hungry mobsters in one way or another.

RUSH: If I may get serious with you for a moment, the left, if you believe them, believes that there's one species on the planet destroying it. Now, all mammals exhale carbon dioxide. But somehow only man, only human beings' carbon dioxide is destroying the planet. It's only man in all of his endeavors, particularly Capitalist Man, Western Culture man. Those are the culprits! We are the real culprits. We are destroying the planet. We are the one species on the planet that's destroying it. Why does the left think this? I'll tell you what I think. We, human beings, are the only species who have the capacity to know and understand the concept of God. No other species has the slightest clue. A fish doesn't even know it's in water. A dog doesn't know it's a dog.

And who the hell knows what cockroaches think. I don't even want to contemplate it. To know God is something unique for all species on the planet. It's us. We're the only ones who know God, who can conceive God and all that that means. Therefore, to the left, to know God is the single most destructive part of the human mind. That's what has to be destroyed. Faith in God, belief in God, that's the real enemy -- and there are many enemies of the left, but that's the first. You go to any communist country and the first thing they do is wipe God and religion out of everybody's mind. The State becomes God and whoever is running it at the time becomes The Messiah. There is no God other than The State. See, God put us here to procreate, to experience his gifts. The left, in order to ultimately succeed, has to end our understanding of God's existence and purpose.

Therefore, we're not going to fix this economic mess until we fix our moral mess. Our country is in a moral shambles, and until we fix the moral destruction that has crept over our culture we're not going to be able to really fix anything else -- and when you start talking about fixing the moral mess, then you really cause the left to rise up and come after you. So they strip all this stuff away and what's at the root of it is: A belief in too many people in something other than The State, something other than the government. If you strip away God... 'Cause a human being has to believe in something, a higher power. Even atheists, they've got something that is a higher power. It's a tree or whatever. It could be another human being. It could be institution that human beings put together but there's gotta be something. If you strip God out it has to be The State. So that's what's happening. That's really at the root of this.

RUSH: Get this, now. This is hot off the press. Just an hour ago from State-Controlled AP: "A top White House economist says spending from the $787 billion economic stimulus has already had its biggest impact on economic growth and will likely not contribute to significant expansion next year." This is it. This is it. Seven months after the stimulus, 49 of 50 states have lost jobs, the jobless claims are way up, denting recovery hopes, and now Christina Romer of the Obama administration -- and we wonder for how long she will be with the Obama administration -- now says this is it, the Porkulus has already had its biggest impact on economic growth. We only spent 14% of it, the bulk of it gets spent next year and what she's telling us is what we already know, that it's not about economic stimulus, it's to reelect Democrats. That's where most of the money is going to go. Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi did not get the memo. Late yesterday afternoon on CNBC, Maria Bartiromo interviewed the speaker of the House, "Do we need a second stimulus? It seems that after $787 billion in stimulus and then the $700 billion from TARP, it's surprising we haven't seen a bigger impact here."

PELOSI: I don't think anybody's surprised that we haven't seen any job creation from TARP. The recovery package that we passed later in January under President Obama has had positive results. Economists told us this morning in our session that absent that recovery package, we'd be in much worse shape.

PELOSI: It's no accident that right now that as the recession's coming to an end it does so where the recovery package is weighing in at its biggest impact in this third quarter, quarter of '09. But more must be done. It's not enough to say we saved jobs and we haven't created enough. And that's why we have to look at the tax code and other remedies that are there for us in the short term.

RUSH: Okay, so Christina Roemer says, this is it, folks, the biggest bang for the buck has already happened, ain't going to get any more. Pelosi said, stimulus is working, now it's time to raise taxes. So Bartiromo said, "On the tax issue, allowing the --" now, you gotta hear this. You got to hear this. "-- allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire would essentially be a tax increase."

PELOSI: It isn't a tax increase, it is eliminating a tax decrease that was there. It was controversial to begin with. It is a boon to those who have had it for now, but I think that you will see that happen, and that is -- that affects, what, the upper 2% of our population --

BARTIROMO: Given the fact that we are still in this fragile recovery, would you rethink allowing those tax cuts to expire given that we are still pretty vulnerable in terms of the economic recovery?

PELOSI: I don't think many people here see, nor do the American people see, those tax cuts at the high end as being job creating. They think that that's part of the reason we're in the fiscal, budgetary situation that we're in, because those tax cuts cost money. We can't afford those taxes, we never could, those tax cuts.

RUSH: All right. Did you figure all that out, ladies and gentlemen? We're dealing with genuine idiots here. Genuine economic illiterate idiots are running the show here. So the administration says, "We've already had our biggest bang for the buck in the stimulus," Pelosi said, oh, no, no, no, it's working, it's time to raise taxes. But it's not a tax increase to let a tax cut expire? No, no, no. It's eliminating a tax decrease that was there. It's eliminating a tax decrease that was there. Who is going to be sending more money to Washington? Do you realize -- well, yeah, you do realize it because the economy is you, and there isn't any growth out there. I'm more frustrated than I have been. Each and every day brings more evidence that we have a willful and purposeful destruction of the private sector economy in the United States, and it's not just Obama, it is the entire Democrat Party which has signed on to do so.

RUSH: The economic news continues to be unbelievably horrible and bad. And, by the way, I think Christina Romer is saying this is it. We've had the Big Bang for the buck that we're going to get on the stimulus. Is she not saying, ladies and gentlemen, that Barack Obama's stimulus has failed? Forty-nine out of 50 states report job losses after the stimulus! So his own economic advisor, Christina Romer, is essentially saying Obama has failed. "Hope and change." You remember what hope is. Hope is an excuse for doing nothing, people sitting around waiting for Mr. Obama to make their lives right. "Labor Department statistics show that the District of Columbia leads the nation in the percentage of jobs lost in September relative to population. Figures released show that New York lost the most jobs last month but DC had the highest percentage of jobs lost relative to population. The DC unemployment rate shot up to 11.4%," right under Obama's nose.

Right under the administration's nose! "The Michigan unemployment rate is the highest in the nation at 15%." The media is not concerned. They keep saying, "Jobless Claims Dent Recovery Hopes." You go back to 2004, or 2008 and look at them reporting a loss of 20,000 jobs, and it was a calamity, it was disaster, it was a recession in the making. And, of course, that's when George W. Bush was in the office.

RUSH: Let's move on to this pay czar business. I know a lot of you have mixed emotions about this. I'll explain what I think your mixed emotions are. Here you have a bunch of Wall Street types and they've already got a bad image, I mean these are the fat cats paying themselves gazillion dollar bonuses and salaries and nobody likes that and, meanwhile, they're getting rich, everybody else got poor, the subprime crisis, all the fraud that was there. So these guys, to save themselves, sign up for the TARP bailout and they accept all this bailout money, and they probably all voted for Obama, or the vast majority of them did and now all of a sudden out of the blue here comes a pay czar saying, "Guess what, we're gonna cut your pay by 90%." Some of you are going, "Well, good, about time that happened. These guys ripped us off, they stole, and everything, and now they're taking federal bailout money." Okay, if you get in bed with a snake you gotta expect the snake to be a snake. In this case the government's the snake, you get in bed with the government, you let the government bail you out, you are opening yourself up to letting government tell you how to run your business.

That's exactly what's happened, and I know that a lot you probably think that's pretty good. It's just like when you see taxes go up on cigarette smokers, "Yeah, smoking kills, secondhand smoke kills, raise taxes on those filthy people!" Yeah, you say that until it starts to happen to you. When everybody else starts to get the shaft but you don't and you think everybody who's getting the shaft deserves it, then you sign onto it. What happened yesterday with this pay czar, regardless of your emotions on this issue, is simply outrageous. The secret to presidential success, ladies and gentlemen, is deniability. That is one of the major secrets to any president's success. "I didn't know that was going on." Bill Clinton, (doing Clinton impression) "Ha-ha, Waco invasion, why, you better go talk to the attorney general, I had no clue about that." So now it is said that Obama had no idea that his pay czar, Kenneth Feinberg, had come up with this figure of 90% cuts in pay. He didn't know. Stands by the decision now but he didn't know about it.

If that's true, these czars have even more power, there's even more reason for an investigation to be called. We got people who are not confirmed by the Senate, not accountable to anybody except Obama and he doesn't know what they're doing, his own administration says, running around basically taking over the private sector under the guise of bailing it out and helping it. You can look at General Motors and Chrysler and say, "Hey, that's going well, isn't it?" We learned yesterday that all that bailout money, guess what? The taxpayers will not get it back. Really? Government investments in these things are not going to pay off. Big shock. Whoever thought they were?

"It will go down in history as one of Barack Obama's signature decisions on the economy, a dramatic move to slash corporate pay at bailed-out banks and automakers. But on Wednesday night, administration officials said that the president of the United States didn't have all that much to do with a decision that will, in many ways, come to define his relationship with Wall Street. In fact, sources within the administration say the decision to cap corporate pay was Kenneth Feinberg's, and his alone. . Feinberg's decision rocked Wall Street - where many otherwise media friendly executives avoided phone calls and deleted e-mails from reporters Wednesday night. Many issued outright "no comment" statements rather than react to the pay-cut news in the first hours after the news broke. Very few executives thought a pay cut of this magnitude was in the offing."

Where to start with this, folks? This is a level 10 BS alert, Barbra Streisand alert. First we are supposed to believe that little old Barry Obama had no idea that his pay czar was out acting like a fascist, and other czars have and do. Barry was clueless that some rogue czar in his administration was out dictating pay for financial firms? It's like Barry had no idea that Anita Dunn idolizes Mao Tse-tung? Barry had no idea that Ron Bloom idolizes Mao Tse-tung? Barry had no idea that Van Jones was an avowed Marxist and communist? Barry had no idea of any of this? You see the wall of deniability the press is trying to build up? He didn't know about any of this. He's Mr. Perfect. He's Mr. Clean. He's Mr. Calm, Cool, and Collected. He's reworking the American economy so what's happening now doesn't ever happen again. The only way that can happen is if what's happening now becomes permanent. Let's go there. Has there ever been a more compelling case, I ask you, for Congress to get rid of every so-called czar there is, has there ever been a bigger bucket of crap poured on Americans and American businesses than this administration and this so-called pay czar who's acting unilaterally without old Barry's knowledge?

Is there no one in Congress to stand up and say, "What's going on? We're going to investigate this." You've got people acting without the president's knowledge, interfering in the private sector, capping executive pay. The problem is, the Democrats in Congress are all for this, and Barney Frank, in case you've forgotten, wants Congress to go further than even the pay czar has gone. Barney Frank wants the government to regulate pay of every business in the country whether they've received bailout money or not. So it's no wonder Obama is out there attacking me and Fox News. Who else will report this? That's what's really going on here. The people who are reporting the truth in this country are the targets of this administration. Fox News, talk radio, me in particular. That's what's going on. The American Thinker has a piece today. There was a hearing yesterday. Joe Lieberman, whatever his Senate health committee is, Lieberman had three administration officials up to talk about the shortage of the H1N1 flu vaccine.

Have you seen any news stories on that? Did you know it happened other than me telling you? If there were a shortage of flu vaccine in the Bush administration and a Senator had called three members of the administration up to explain it, that's all you'd be hearing about because they'd be trying to create a panic that Bush is incompetent, his administration is so incompetent it's going to lead to people dying. There was one news agency that reported the results, the story at all. It was Fox News. You can go to Google, you can go to AOL, you can go to any search engine you want and try to find any mainstream story of Lieberman and a hearing with three administration officials on the shortage of H1N1 and it's not there. They didn't report it. Only Fox did. And in this way, some people are saying maybe the administration's plan to marginalize Fox is working. Fox reports something, you simply let it stay with Fox, it doesn't go anywhere else, and only the Fox audience will know about it. There is definitely collusion, because there's no difference between Barack Obama and Chris Matthews, Barack Obama or anybody else in the Drive-By Media, they are on the same team, they are doing the same things, just from different locations.

I think everything about this story, this pay czar, is blockbuster. It's late-night comedy gold. Everything about the story is a lie. Everything about the story, this is in The Politico, but it's all over the place, it's at FoxNews.com, every detail about this story has to be a lie. I refuse to believe that Obama didn't know what Feinberg was doing. In fact, the truth probably is Feinberg's following orders. Feinberg is following orders, and I guaran-damn-tee you, Obama said you get up there and you rape 'em and you make 'em poor and you make 'em pay and you let 'em know. Just don't tell 'em that I knew anything about it. You go out there and you're on your own and I'll back you up.

I don't believe for a moment that Obama had no idea what his pay czar was doing when he announced these kinds of cuts. "One official told Fox News that Feinberg from the start had the independent authority to work with companies and make such a call. Obama was never required to sign off before final decisions were made." Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot, WTF, who the hell is going to believe this? Sign me up for the Ten Million Man March, folks. This is so much worse than Clinton hiding behind Janet Reno's skirt after the Waco invasion, it isn't even funny. Obama didn't sign off? What the hell else has he turned over to his czars? I mean it's all a lie.

Here's another headline from Fox News: "White House Pay Czar Kenneth Feinberg Did Not Seek Obama's Approval." I don't believe it for a minute. I believe that Feinberg could not have acted without Obama's instructions. Make no mistake, Obama is not an innocent bystander, he's not Mr. Perfect, this guy's got a chip on his shoulder and he's going after everybody that he thinks is responsible for this nation's immorality and unjustness and unfairness, and those people happen to be those who achieve. I would really like to ask everybody, because I know there are a lot of people happy about this, this is what's scary, there are a lot of people happy that these guys have been raped this way. That's why I started the subject saying "I know you've got mixed emotions." But I want to ask you a question, I want to ask you how is your life better now that the pay czar is in control? Okay, these Wall Street guys got 90% of their salaries cut. I want to know how that's improved your life. If all you're doing is sitting around saying, "Yeah, man, yeah, man, you screw 'em," is your life any better for that? You want to live on vengeance? Is vengeance your diet? Is vengeance your meal? Show me the calories. Show me the nutritional value of it.

Just like when the rich get tax increases, "Yeah, man, yeah, man, soak 'em," does it make your life any better? So Wall Street execs are gonna lose 90% of their compensation. How is that job search coming for you, by the way? So you gonna get a new job now because of this? You gonna get more money? You going to have a better life because Wall Street got screwed? Cut salaries of a hotshot Wall Street guy, no problem, I'm not a Wall Street guy, you go ahead and cut 'em. Go ahead and raise taxes on cigarettes. I'm not one of the cigarette smokers. Ripple effect. It's all coming. It's going to affect all of us. It's right out in the open, we can all see it. By the way, in the Associated Press story on this, is this little paragraph: "Elsewhere, Freddie Mac --" a supposed private sector business, it's a government-run mortgage house "-- Freddie Mac is giving its chief financial officer compensation worth as much as five-and-a-half million dollars, including a $2 million signing bonus. The government-controlled mortgage finance company doesn't have to follow the executive compensation rules because it's being paid outside the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP." So you work for the government and you get paid whatever you want. Five-and-a-half million to the Freddie Mac CEO, Wall Street guys get canned, get raped. And Barry Obama had no clue. Do you believe that?

CALLER: Hey, Rush! Mega dittos from the great state of Texas. Listened to you for many years, and it's so funny I get through on a day that I disagree with you on this one issue.

CALLER: I'm open... I'm I will open to your ideas and changing me. The only thing I would like that B.O. has done so far is given those Navy SEALs the authorization to shoot the pirates. So I'm not a supporter of his. BUT the pay czar is limiting the compensation of the CEOs who have received my tax dollars. So I understand the overall principle you're saying, that it's a bad thing for the government to get into this business of regulating who can make what. I don't agree with that overall. But in these specifics instances, what's wrong with it?

RUSH: Well, there's a practical reality to all of this, and that is: Despite what you think of these people, they are the best and brightest at what they do and they're going to go elsewhere. They're going to elsewhere. They're going to leave the country to find jobs elsewhere. They're not going to sit and put up with this. You know, we can go on and on and on about "my tax dollars bailed them out." You know, 1.4 trillion of our tax dollars don't even exist and they're spending it! Look, I understand the mixed feelings. Central Planning fascists shouldn't have anything to say about private sector compensation. That's a given. But these firms took money from central planners. (I really would like to know how many of them voted for Obama.)

But here's the thing. Every business in the country can now see what happens when you make a deal with the devil, when you get in bed with the snake. You end up selling your soul. These companies are now screwed, John! They are screwed, which is the design here. The Obama administration... This is fascism: They're still private owned but they're being run by who? Not even Obama, we're told. The freaking pay czar, who doesn't even have to tell Obama what he's doing! So he doesn't have to stop at the execs. He can limit the pay of the janitors. He can limit the pay of anybody he wants -- and pretty soon, it's going to spread beyond companies that took TARP money. These people who put their companies on the hook are gonna get the hell out, and the second-teamers will step in and run things into the ground in partnership with the government that intends to take over these businesses.

The unintended consequences here are things that you need to look at. It's tempting to say, "Those are my tax dollars. They took my tax dollars and they paid themselves big bonuses! It's about time we got the tax dollars back!" You're not going to get the tax dollars, pal. Obama is taking them back, Obama is stealing people's work. Go talk to Ken Lewis who runs Bank of America. They are retracting; they are taking back his entire 2009 salary, the whole thing! Not 90%. All $2.3 million of it. Now, class envy has been practiced so well by the Democrats and a lot of the country is cheering about this. But it's not helping anybody's life. It's not improving anybody's circumstance. I'll tell you who I feel for here, John. There are shareholders of these companies. People like you who have invested in these companies, not with your tax dollars but with your after-tax dollars. Our government has taken advantage of a financial crisis they created. They're destroying firms, they're destroying jobs, destroying wealth, and they don't need to be applauded for it!

RUSH: Look, folks, I'm going to have a lot more to say about this as soon as we get back in the monologue segment of the next hour. But would you people please stop and think what you're saying? So you pay taxes and you think you can dictate pay for firms? You pay taxes, and that allows you to support people who want to take over private business? Do you get to tell Walmart how much it pays people simply because you go in there and buy a damn pair of flip-flops every other day? Folks, you gotta wake up here. This is absurd.

RUSH: I mentioned the House of Representatives has, uh, how to say this? They have reformulated the House version of health care and it's $871 billion price tag, because they realize they need to do something with it. That bill is the focal point of opposition. They claim in their revamped version here that the way they've redone the bill will keep costs low. They will keep costs low. Now, Ed Morrissey writes about this at the Hot Air blog and I want to get into what he says, and we'll do it in the next hour, because there's profound difference between cost and price, and these Democrats are trying to make people think that costs of something are the price and they're two different things entirely. The last time we had wage and price controls was in the seventies with Nixon. I remember I was in Pittsburgh and inflation was at 3%, we had an oil crisis going on, and of course management always loves wage and price controls. "Well, I can't give you a raise, the federal government says I can't give you a raise." But prices, there's no way to control prices.

I'll just give you one example of how price controls fail. If you were alive back then, ask yourself, did the price of things freeze? You wanted to report whoever was violating this to some government authority, your wages were frozen but the prices weren't. Let's use a butcher as an example. You go into the grocery store to the butcher counter and you want to buy a cut of meat, and the price on that that particular cut of meat is frozen so they can't raise it legally. All they do is create a new cut like the center rib eye red eye. Just call it something new. It's exempt from the price. Price at whatever they want and make up whatever it is they can't make because the price on the other side is frozen, this happened all the time, prices just constantly skyrocketed during wage and price controls. But the whole concept that the House now is going to keep costs down, which is fooling everybody into thinking that the price now for health care is going to get cheaper, the two are unrelated.

One glaring example. Have you ever heard of a loss leader? The Larry King show was a loss leader for the then Mutual Network. The Larry King show was on at midnight to six. It made no money. They were willing to lose money on it because they told affiliates, "You have to carry our newscast during the day and our commercials," which is where they made their money. So the costs of the Larry King show were sky high compared to the price they were able to sell advertising on it, which was zero. There are loss leaders throughout business where people sell something for a price much less than what the product costs. Sometimes they have to do that because of market pressure. Other times they do it to create loss leaders and get business elsewhere in their organization.

RUSH: Ed Morrissey posted this at 9:30 today on HotAir.com, the blog: "Perhaps the leading economists of the US could convene a special remedial course for Congress to explain the difference between price and costs. One might have expected the political class to have learned that difference from the disastrous US effort to fix prices and wages in the 1970s during Richard Nixon's term in office, but apparently not. Democrats hailed their new, revamped House version of ObamaCare and its $871 billion price tag, based on forcing more providers into existing Medicare reimbursement rates. They claim that this will keep costs low, which is absolutely incorrect." And here's the news blurb: "House leaders have cut the cost of their health-care overhaul to around $871 billion over the next decade, Democratic sources said Tuesday night, and were working to line up votes for the package with the aim of bringing it before the full House early next month." Remember, Thanksgiving is the target date here.

"The $871 billion estimate -- well under the $900 billion limit set by President Obama -- is the latest of several versions scored by congressional budget analysts, according to a Democratic aide, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss private talks. . But the idea is opposed by many conservative Democrats from rural areas, where Medicare rates are well below the national average." This is so convoluted. Do you realize what they're doing here? They are going to reduce costs by forcing more providers into existing Medicare reimbursement rates. Anyway, Ed Morrissey, this is important here: "Fixing prices does not lower costs. Let me repeat that: fixing prices does not lower costs. 'Costs' are borne by providers, who get reimbursed --" What is so complicated about the word "paid"? It's one syllable. Reimbursed? But I digress.

"'Costs' are borne by providers --" That means doctors and hospitals and nurses and clean water technicians and all the rest, "-- who get reimbursed by either consumers (in a rational market) or by third parties (American health care) for their goods and/or services. In a competitive market, providers have to set their prices at an attractive level in order to get business without missing out on profit opportunities, but their prices have to cover their costs or they go out of business. Not coincidentally, the latter is what happens when price-fixing is used. When government fixes the price of goods and services, it usually does so to mask costs, not reduce them. This is what Medicare has done for years, which is why doctors avoid Medicare patients now. When the fixed price becomes less than the actual cost to provide the service, the provider is forced out of business," unless he can sneak around and overcharge for another service to make up for what he's losing with his fixed price on his so-called reimbursement.

"And what Medicare reimbursement schedule does the House use to show those cost savings, anyway? Would that be the schedule that will start dramatically cutting reimbursements over the next few years?" Again, will that be the schedule that will start dramatically cutting payments over the next few years? So we're going to bring this stupid $900 billion figure down to a mythical, what, $29 billion. Gotta get it under $900 billion before Obama approves it. So we're going to reduce reimbursements, i.e., payments, which means that the people who provide the services, who have costs that -- you can't fix the cost of something. It costs what it costs, but the price that they can charge for it, or that they're going to get reimbursed for it is gonna make it not worth their time. "Or will it use the Stabenow bill in the Senate that would eliminate those cuts, and which the Senate also ignored when calculating the cost of the Baucus bill?"

So we have pure smoke and mirrors, absolutely inanity here. This rigmarole, this razzmatazz to try to persuade people, "We are reducing costs." You are not reducing costs at all. You are reducing what doctors and providers are going to earn. The cost is not gonna be reduced. The price is what's gonna be jimmied with here, and it's not gonna be enough for these providers to make it worth their while to provide the service, which he points out what's happening in Medicare right now. That's why so many doctors are opting out of it. What the government, what Medicare says they're going to be paid -- i.e., reimbursed -- is less than what it costs to provide. They'll say to hell with this. So they're setting up their own practices and they're taking clients, pay them retainers like you pay a lawyer, have 15 or 20 patients, and that's your practice, to hell with you and Medicare. They can never treat a Medicare patient once they opt out of it, as it exists.

What a mess, what an absolute mess. The market will take care of this if you just get out of the way and let it, but, of course, we can't have that. At one point, folks, I will be honest with you, early on in my star-studded career, I wanted to be the smartest guy in the country. I wanted to be thought of as the smartest guy in the country. I have succeeded but it's depressing because I am surrounded by pure idiocy. We all are. We are all surrounded by morons. We are surrounded by the clinically ignorant. We are surrounded by abject, total, 100%, dangerous, arrogant stupidity, and corruption. So what good does it do to be the smartest guy in the country? All it does is make you feel like you want to explode.

No matter what, we are not getting TARP money back; it will simply be spent on something else by the government:

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 #98	Kukis Digests and Opines on this Week’s News and Views	October 25, 2009