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).

The justice department of President Obama will no longer prosecute medical marijuana havens.

President Obama has still not made a decision about increasing troop levels in Afghanistan, as suggested several months ago by his man, General McChrystal. From the noise coming out of Washington, Obama will probably make this decision after the U.S. elections.

Both the House and the Senate seem to have healthcare bills developed at this time, both with a public option. The Senate bill is posted online. Pelosi changes the name of the public option to the consumer option, attempting to obscure that this is government-run healthcare.

It has come out that safe schools czar Kevin Jennings helped fund an anti-Christian, pornographic exhibit at Harvard.

Speaking of which, most of the alphabet media continues not reporting on Kevin Jennings and his background.

Jessee Vasold is the first transgender person elected as a class homecoming queen at the College of William and Mary. The joke is, the college will change its name to “William is Mary College.”

The 2010 Defense Authorization Bill also carried with it Hate Crimes legislation.

“Wall Street is in a far better place now than it was a year ago,” missspoke Juan Williams.

“I can say, without fear of being contradicted by any reputable source, so far we have created over a million jobs,” Joe Biden reassures us.

After seeing a film of attractive models taking off their clothes because of global warming, Dennis Miller remarked, “They didn’t tell me the carbon footprint was a stiletto heel.”

"I think that what the administration has said very clearly is that we're going to speak truth to power," senior advisor to the President Valerie Jarrett said, apparently unaware that her boss is the President now.

"The percentage of taxes on GDP (in Pakistan) is among the lowest in the world... We (the United States) tax everything that moves and doesn't move, and that's not what we see in Pakistan," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said to senior Pakistani reporters this week.

Cal Thomas (resurrection: President Obama): “Here's the problem though. He, who lives by the media, dies by the media. The time for a president to go on television is to advance policy or to persuade the public of something. The president doesn't have a plan for Afghanistan. He has to think about it for the next however long. He doesn't have a health care plan. This is a congressional plan or at least several versions of it. He didn't really have a plan to bring the Olympics to Chicago other than the force of his personality, which didn't work. We are seeing a diminished power right before our eyes, because he doesn't have anything other than his personality.”

Jeffrey Ross, near the end of his service on Hannity’s Great American Panel, “This is the worst episode of elemi-date that I have every been on.”

“You reduce healthcare costs by rationing or by increasing efficiency—the government is not known for its efficiency.” Tagg Romney, who I suspect will follow in his father’s footsteps.

This requires some setup. A couple of weeks ago, Rush lost out on becoming an owner of a football team because of some statements that he said...except that he did not make any of these statements. However, a couple people excused these false quotes by saying, “Well, that is pretty much what he says anyway.” So, a false story is planted about Obama’s university thesis about sharing the wealth, so, when Rush reports on it, and then later finds out that it is a hoax, Rush said, “We know how he [Obama] feels about distribution of wealth so we stand by the fabricated quote because we know Obama thinks it anyway.” In case you did not get it, that is called satire.

Militant Isalmists are ramping up their activities in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Jake Tapper (a good liberal journalist) reports on the cost/job, using the assertion that the Stimulus Bill has created 1 million jobs and so far, about $160 billion has been paid out, comes to $160,000 per job saved or created. Great video:

60 Minutes did an excellent segment on Medicare fraud (this is only a 1 minute piece of the segment; no idea why they have not posted the entire segment):

Although I am not Hannity’s biggest fan, I do enjoy he and Luntz talking to voters (Luntz asks the better questions):

PJTV on John Murtha and his earmarks (if you are unaware of Murtha’s airport, you need to see this):

Lord Moncton has challenged Al Gore to a debate on global warming...for about the 94^th time:

1) Government cannot run a relatively simple program like Cash for Clunkers or properly distribute the H1N1 virus vaccine; but somehow, they are qualified to be in control of 16% of America’s economy (the healthcare industry).

2) I think we clearly know who President Obama is by now. In thinking back to the campaign, he portrayed himself to the Democrat party as the most left-wing of the candidates. However, as soon as he got his party’s nomination, he immediately began to campaign from the center, making many who heard him after that think that he was a reasonable, thoughtful, centrist candidate. It was almost like watching 2 different men—Obama before and after getting the Democrat candidacy. However, when he began to govern, he was at the far left again, outspending any and every president in history, seizing a variety of private companies, and ignoring all conservative input. For this reason, any time he says something which sounds conservative or even centrist, I automatically believe him to be lying.

3) You will note that Valerie Jarrett and other members of the Obama cabinet never offer specific instances where FoxNews gets it wrong. Their problem appears to be that, apart from Fox’s 3 editorial programs, FoxNews is the only station reporting any real news about President Obama, his actions, decisions, and associations.

4) Believe it or not, Republicans are also anti-hate and conservatives think that hate is a bad thing. However, the last thing in the world that we need are laws which legislate against thinking. As Michael Medved pointed out, there is not a single person who commits a hate crime who would have gotten out of being prosecuted if not for this week’s Hate Crimes Bill.

$24,000 taxpayer cost for each new car + clunker trade in. This is roughly the cost of the average car. Do you wonder why such a successful program was cancelled?

Our present debt at 1–2% is more or less manageable. However, as soon as the interest rate on our debt reaches 6.5%, the amount of interest of American debt will exceed all government revenue combined.

Just imagine if, on one day, Vice President Cheney came out and said the economy is good and everything is moving like it should; and then the next day, came out and said how bad the economy was.

Just imagine the press that President Bush would have gotten suggestions from his generals on the ground, and then he took 3 months to think about it, which included, in part, a political calculation.

How would the press have treated Bush if he made claims about a tremendous stimulus package, and it is obvious that none of these claims are true?

What would the press have done if Bush sent out several members of his cabinet to excoriate MSNBC on television?

Around the beginning of 2008, we began getting stories bemoaning the Bush economy (with essentially full employment—4–5%); and the words Great Depression were seen again and again. Now that Obama is in charge, we have one story from MSNBC about being laid off can be a good thing; from Reuters saying that recession is a good thing, and the Washington Post writes a story called Recession’s Hidden Virtues.

Here’s what they could have done (this is also listed in the Must Watch Vids section...

I think that there have been some intentional leaks out of the White House about Afghanistan. Two things were pushed out there: 20,000 more troops for Afghanistan and the idea that, if we withdraw our troops from Afghanistan, the Taliban will not necessarily take over. It is likely that these points-of-view will be polled as well.

Obama appears to trying to hold on to his radical left by postponing his decision to send in troops to Afghanistan

Is that insane Florida representative, Grayson, a plant? Whenever there is too much negativity against Obama, or Obama-care, does Grayson go out and make some outrageous statement to gobble up air time (particularly on FoxNews)? I’m just asking...

Jake Tapper, despite his liberal leanings, holds White House feet to the fire with regards to the Stimulus Bill.

Governor Ted Strickland (D–Ohio) clearly and unequivocally stands in opposition to casinos being opened up in Ohio as a government income source.

Evan Bayh, Ben Nelson, and other Democratic Senators are voicing concern over the Senate healthcare bill. Will they stick by their guns?

Competitive option = a government healthcare program (like Medicare) which will eliminate competition.

Consumer option = a government healthcare program designed to remove consumer choice.

Are you aware of the pornographic display at Harvard University partially funded by your safe-schools czar Kevin Jennings? Have you see any of the photos of the exhibit? Would you like to?

You think that safe schools czar Kevin Jennings is an okay guy and rightly placed as the Safe Schools Czar. Even more brainwashed if you do not make the connection between militant homosexuals using the bullying issue to push their agenda down into elementary schools.

There are a few elections being held on Nov. 3^rd. If they are bad for Democrats, on Nov. 4^th, Obama will announce increasing the troops in Afghanistan by 20,000 to 30,000 (the idea is to shove this off the front page). If the news is good for Democrats, then Obama will wait till the 5^th or 6^th and send in 20,000 additional troops into Afghanistan.

Bob Beckel, one of the FoxNews Democrats, says (and I am embellishing this somewhat) that the public option is being brought out to get the far, far left Congressional members on-board. Because it is clear that some Democrat moderates will not vote for it, it will be dropped at the last moment for a public option with a trigger or a coop plan. I think he is right.

This is not an earth-shattering prediction: Lynne Cheney (daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney) is positioning herself to run for office in 2010.

Rush predicts that the GDP growth this past quarter will be revised downward. Let me add to that, unemployment will stay about the same or increase, and that this next quarter will show growth, but only because it includes Christmas sales.

More on government taking over the news. It has been suggested that people from Americorps become a part of the staff of various press concerns which are in trouble. Recall, I said that the government may not pay the various media outlets directly, but manage to keep them afloat indirectly. I suggested government covering the cost of AP or something like this; but providing government-paid volunteers from Americorps would also be an indirect way of doing this.

I saw at least 3 other news stories this past week saying that Obama is still in campaign mode.

I also said that Obama is a dedicated ideologue who has a definite social agenda, but no interest in foreign relations. This is why Obama has been pushing his healthcare bill, replete with dozens of speeches and appearances, and yet he has said nothing about Afghanistan.

All of the private sector wealth seized in the past year by the government will stay in the government’s hands.

That's why it is a fairly artificial number, the 3.5 percent. It is an encouraging one. The growth is pretty robust given how low we were before.

But let's look at one of the factors. About a point and a half of the three and a half is from autos. And a lot of that is from the clunkers program, which, of course, was a one-time gimmick which stole demand out of the future into the present.

And we know that because when it ended, September saw a collapse of auto demand, which means that if you increase it artificially, as we did, demand in the summer, for autos, it will be lower in the fall, lower in the winter, lower next year, which means that the point and a half added to this year is probably going to be zero added in the next year or even the autos will be a drag on the economy.

So even though it is a healthy number now, it doesn't tell us if it is going to remain healthy.

The larger issue is that, again, a lot of this is from the billions sprinkled on the economy out of Washington. Ultimately it creates a debt that ultimately has to end up being repaid either in higher taxes or in inflation and then higher interest rates, which means we're going to have a drag onto economy.

Krauthammer on Senate leader Harry Reid adding the public option back into the Senate bill

Well, it's getting weirder and weirder. We already have a 1,500-page bill of some sort eventually, which is a mishmash, a crazy quilt of regulations, and new programs and mandates all mixed up adding hopeless inefficiencies on to an already hopelessly inefficient system.

And now we're going to have an opt in and opt-out public option, which is going to make the quilt even crazier.

Look, the argument is it will increase competition if you have a public option. The way to increase competition, to lower the price of health insurance, is simple. It's not adding inefficiencies and regulations and government involvement in subsidies. It is abolishing the ban on the purchase of health insurance across state lines.

You buy auto insurance in a national market. You buy life insurance. It's the reason that prices in America are low. If you weren't allowed to buy oranges across the state, it would be expensive in Wisconsin, especially in the winter.

But the problem is that Democrats think that is too easy, too competitive, and capitalist. Instead, what you want is a public option under one guise or another which will increase government control. That's what it is about. It is not about competition by any means.

BAIER: We [have] heard the House Speaker and Senate Majority leader talk about the health insurance companies and how they are making these astronomical profits.

[However], it's not what the numbers show. Networking Communications equipment actually top the list of the Fortune 500. The make 20.4 percent.

Way down on the list behind railroads and medical products is health insurance at number 35 with a profit margin of just 2.2 percent.

KRAUTHAMMER: I'm not sure how responsive to actual facts the Democrats are, but that is part of their propaganda, the idea of these immoral, amoral profits. Senator Kerry was one of those who attacked the healthcare industry as having immoral profits.

Heinz Ketchup, to which he is married, had almost twice as high of a profit margin as health insurance. So I'm not sure that he has the moral high ground here.

Just one year ago, would you have believed that an unelected government official, not even a Cabinet member confirmed by the Senate but simply one of the many "czars" appointed by the President, could arbitrarily cut the pay of executives in private businesses by 50 percent or 90 percent?

Did you think that another "czar" would be talking about restricting talk radio? That there would be plans afloat to subsidize newspapers-- that is, to create a situation where some newspapers' survival would depend on the government liking what they publish?

Did you imagine that anyone would even be talking about having a panel of so-called "experts" deciding who could and could not get life-saving medical treatments?

Scary as that is from a medical standpoint, it is also chilling from the standpoint of freedom. If you have a mother who needs a heart operation or a child with some dire medical condition, how free would you feel to speak out against an administration that has the power to make life and death decisions about your loved ones?

How about a federal agency giving school children material to enlist them on the side of the president? Merely being assigned to sing his praises in class is apparently not enough.

How much of America would be left if the federal government continued on this path? President Obama has already floated the idea of a national police force, something we have done without for more than two centuries.

We already have local police forces all across the country and military forces for national defense, as well as the FBI for federal crimes and the National Guard for local emergencies. What would be the role of a national police force created by Barack Obama, with all its leaders appointed by him? It would seem more like the brown shirts of dictators than like anything American.

How far the President will go depends of course on how much resistance he meets. But the direction in which he is trying to go tells us more than all his rhetoric or media spin.

Barack Obama has not only said that he is out to "change the United States of America," the people he has been associated with for years have expressed in words and deeds their hostility to the values, the principles and the people of this country.

Jeremiah Wright said it with words: "God damn America!" Bill Ayers said it with bombs that he planted. Community activist goons have said it with their contempt for the rights of other people.

Among the people appointed as czars by President Obama have been people who have praised enemy dictators like Mao, who have seen the public schools as places to promote sexual practices contrary to the values of most Americans, to a captive audience of children.

Those who say that the Obama administration should have investigated those people more thoroughly before appointing them are missing the point completely. Why should we assume that Barack Obama didn't know what such people were like, when he has been associating with precisely these kinds of people for decades before he reached the White House?

Nothing is more consistent with his lifelong patterns than putting such people in government-- people who reject American values, resent Americans in general and successful Americans in particular, as well as resenting America's influence in the world.

Any miscalculation on his part would be in not thinking that others would discover what these stealth appointees were like. Had it not been for the Fox News Channel, these stealth appointees might have remained unexposed for what they are. Fox News is now high on the administration's enemies list.

Nothing so epitomizes President Obama's own contempt for American values and traditions like trying to ram two bills through Congress in his first year-- each bill more than a thousand pages long-- too fast for either of them to be read, much less discussed. That he succeeded only the first time says that some people are starting to wake up. Whether enough people will wake up in time to keep America from being dismantled, piece by piece, is another question-- and the biggest question for this generation.

Everyone knows that if you don't pay to maintain and repair your car, you limit its life. The same is true as human beings age. We need medical care to avoid becoming clunkers -- disabled, worn out, parked in wheelchairs or nursing homes.

For nearly a half century, Medicare has enabled seniors to get that care. But ObamaCare is about to change that, by limiting what doctors can provide their aging patients.

The Senate Finance Committee health bill released last week controls doctors by cutting their pay if they give older patients more care than the government deems appropriate. Section 3003(b) (p. 683) punishes doctors who land in the 90th percentile or above on what they provide for seniors on Medicare by withholding 5 percent of their compensation.

This withhold provision forces doctors to choose between treating their patients and avoiding government penalties. HMOs used the same cost-cutting device in the early '90s until it was deemed dangerous to patients and outlawed. Now, lawmakers want to use it against the most vulnerable patients, the elderly. This bill and four others under negotiation also would slash about $500 billion from future Medicare funding.

President Obama and his budget director, Peter Orszag, have told seniors not to worry, claiming that Medicare spending could be cut by as much as 30 percent without doing harm. They cite the Dartmouth Atlas of Healthcare 2008, which tries to prove patients who get less care -- fewer hospital days, doctors' visits and imaging tests -- have the same medical "outcomes" as patients who get more care. But read the fine print.

The Dartmouth authors arrived at their dubious conclusion by restricting their study to patients who died. They examined what Medicare paid to care for these chronically ill patients in their last two years. By definition, the outcomes were all the same: death. The Dartmouth study didn't consider patients who recovered, left the hospital and even resumed active lives. It would be important to know whether these patients survived because they received more care.

The journal Circulation addresses that question in its latest issue (Oct. 16) and disputes the Dartmouth conclusion. Examining patients with heart failure at six California teaching hospitals, doctors found that hospitals giving more care saved more lives. In hospitals that spent less, patients had a smaller chance of survival. That's the opposite of what Obama is claiming and Congress is proposing. The Senate Finance bill establishes a formula that penalizes hospitals for high "Medicare spending per beneficiary" (Section 2001, p. 643). That may save money, but the California study suggests it will cost lives.

When Medicare started in 1965, the law forbade the federal government from interfering in treatment decisions. Doctors decided what patients needed, and Medicare paid for each treatment on a fee-for-service basis. Though this protection from government interference has been whittled away a bit, doctors and patients in Medicare still decide what state-of-the-art medical care they want.

The results are huge improvements in longevity and seniors' quality of life. Life expectancy at age 65 has jumped from 79 years to 84, while disability has steadily declined. Seniors enjoy more active lives than their parents owing to hip and knee replacements, angioplasty and bypass surgery, according to James Lubitz and Ellen Kramarow of the National Center for Health Statistics (Health Affairs, Sept./Oct. 2007). Obama adviser Dr. David Cutler reports that the heart medications and procedures Medicare patients have received over the last 20 years have been a "wise investment" resulting in "excellent value" (Health Affairs, Jan./Feb. 2007).

Cuts in future Medicare funding -- what Obama calls "savings" -- will mean less help in coping with aging and possibly shorter lives. Do we really want to treat our seniors like clunkers?

This is the place to go if you want to see what is actually in the new healthcare bill (something I believe alphabet media will downplay).

WASHINGTON - An early progress report on President Barack Obama's economic recovery plan overstates by thousands the number of jobs created or saved through the stimulus program, a mistake that White House officials promise will be corrected in future reports.

The government's first accounting of jobs tied to the $787 billion stimulus program claimed more than 30,000 positions paid for with recovery money. But that figure is overstated by least 5,000 jobs, according to an Associated Press review of a sample of stimulus contracts.

The AP review found some counts were more than 10 times as high as the actual number of jobs; some jobs credited to the stimulus program were counted two and sometimes more than four times; and other jobs were credited to stimulus spending when none was produced.

_ A company working with the Federal Communications Commission reported that stimulus money paid for 4,231 jobs, when about 1,000 were produced.

_ A Georgia community college reported creating 280 jobs with recovery money, but none was created from stimulus spending.

_ A Florida child care center said its stimulus money saved 129 jobs but used the money on raises for existing employees.

There's no evidence the White House sought to inflate job numbers in the report. But administration officials seized on the 30,000 figure as evidence that the stimulus program was on its way toward fulfilling the president's promise of creating or saving 3.5 million jobs by the end of next year.

The reporting problem could be magnified Friday when a much larger round of reports is expected to show hundreds of thousands of jobs repairing public housing, building schools, repaving highways and keeping teachers on local payrolls.

The White House says it is aware there are problems. In an interview, Ed DeSeve, an Obama adviser helping to oversee the stimulus program, said agencies have been working with businesses that received the money to correct mistakes. Other errors discovered by the public also will be corrected, he said.

The White House released a statement early Thursday that it said laid out the "real facts" about how jobs were counted in the stimulus data distributed two weeks ago. It said that had been a test run of a small subset of data that had been subjected only to three days of reviews, that it had already corrected "virtually all" the mistakes identified by the AP and that the discovery of mistakes "does not provide a statistically significant indication of the quality of the full reporting that will come on Friday."

The data partially reviewed by the AP for errors included all the data presently available, representing all known federal contracts awarded to businesses under the stimulus program. The figures being released Friday include different categories of stimulus spending by state governments, housing authorities, nonprofit groups and other organizations.

As of early Thursday, on its recovery.org Web site, the government was still citing 30,383 as the actual number of jobs linked so far to stimulus spending, despite the mistakes the White House has now acknowledged and said were being corrected.

It's not clear just how far off the 30,000 claim was. The AP's review was not an exhaustive accounting of all 9,000 contracts, but homed in on the most obvious cases where there were indications of duplications or misinterpretations.

While the thousands of overstated jobs represent a tiny sliver of the overall economy, they represent a significant percentage of the initial employment count credited to the stimulus program.

Tom Gavin, a spokesman for the White House budget office, attributed the errors to officials as well as recipients having to conduct such reporting for the first time.

In fact, the AP review shows some businesses undercounted the number of jobs funded under the stimulus program by not reporting jobs saved.

_ Colorado-based Teletech Government Solutions on a $28.3 million contract with the Federal Communications Commission for creation of a call center, reported creating 4,231 jobs, although 3,000 of those workers were paid for five weeks or less.

"We all felt it was an appropriate way to represent the data at the time" and the reporting error has been corrected, said company president Mariano Tan.

_ The Toledo, Ohio-based Koring Group received two FCC contracts, again for call centers. It reported hiring 26 people for each contract, or a total of 52 jobs, but cited the same workers for both contracts. The jobs only lasted about two months.

The FCC spotted the problem. The company's owner, Steve Holland, acknowledged the actual job count is closer to five and blamed the problem on confusion about the reporting.

The AP's review identified nearly 600 contracts claiming stimulus money for more than 2,700 jobs that appear to have similar duplicated counts.

_ Barbara Moore, executive director of the Child Care Association of Brevard County in Cocoa, Fla., reported that the $98,669 she received in stimulus money saved 129 jobs at her center, though the cash was used to give her 129 employees a 3.9 percent cost-of-living raise. She said she needed to boost their salaries because some workers had left "because we had not been able to give them a raise in four years."

_ Officials at East Central Technical College in Douglas, Ga., said they now know they shouldn't have claimed 280 stimulus jobs linked to more than $200,000 to buy trucks and trailers for commercial driving instruction, and a modular classroom and bathroom for a health education program.

"It was an error on someone's part," said Mike Light, spokesman for the Technical College System of Georgia. The 280 were not jobs, but the number of students who would benefit, he said.

_ The San Joaquin, Calif., Regional Rail Commission reported creating or saving 125 jobs as part of a stimulus project to lay railroad track. Because the project drew from two pools of money, the commission reported the jobs figure twice, bringing the total to 250 on the government report. Spokesman Thomas Reeves said the commission corrected the data Tuesday.

Interestingly enough, although this is important news, this story was featured on more blogs and websites than in main newspapers and in the alphabet media.

Following is a White House blog posted today seeking to clarify what it sees as a "misleading" Associated Press report on how many jobs have been saved or created by the government's stimulus plan. Following that is the AP story that started the whole thing.

You may have seen a misleading Associated Press story this morning on the accuracy of Recovery Act job reports that were posted earlier this month on Recovery.gov. On the same day that we learned that the economy has begun to grow again for the first time in over year, the very critics who opposed economic rescue from the beginning are now trying use this misleading story to twist the truth about the early success of the Recovery Act.

Governors, mayors, county executives, private businesses and community organizations across the country submit reports to Recovery.gov so that you can get an unprecedented look at how your taxpayer dollars are being spent creating jobs and boosting the economy through the Recovery Act. These reports are not from the federal government - but from the very people putting Recovery funds to work.

Our top priority is ensuring that, when the reports are posted on Recovery.gov tomorrow, you will get the most accurate look possible at what has taken place with the Recovery Act over the last eight months. That's why we have been working with the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board - an independent oversight body - and the actual people that submitted the reports to conduct an extensive three-week review of them.

Three business days into the review, the Board posted a preliminary portion of those reports - just federal contracts which represent less than 2 percent of the Recovery Act and are a sliver of the information collected - on Recovery.gov so that you could get a look at what had been turned in initially. We support the Board's act of transparency - but were clear that day that we considered the reports "partial and preliminary" and noted that it was "too soon to draw any global conclusions" from them.

Our twenty-day review wraps up today and we can say with confidence that the full set of reports going up tomorrow - corrected versions of the reports posted on October 15th, and many more new reports being posted for the first time now -- are far sharper than the initial ones you saw two weeks ago. In fact, our review process had already caught four out of five items that AP's misleading story cites as "over-counting" jobs. With every review of the reports, with every call to the person filing them to confirm them, the information has gotten better and better - and we are looking forward to their public posting tomorrow. It will be a historic moment for government transparency.

"The government has overstated by thousands the number of jobs it has created or saved with federal contracts under the president's $787 billion recovery program, according to an Associated Press review of data released in the program's first progress report."

FACT: The reports are not from the government, but from the very people putting Recovery Act funds to work - governors, mayors, county executives, private businesses and community organizations across the country. We take our responsibly of reviewing these reports for accuracy very seriously - that's why we are putting them through an extensive three-week review process that ends today. And the initial preliminary set of data representing just a sliver of the overall reports was not posted by the government - but by an independent oversight body overseeing our Recovery Act efforts.

"The errors could be magnified Friday when a much larger round of reports is released."

FACT: The federal contract data AP reviewed was a test run posting of a small sub-set of the data that was made available to the public after less than three business days of review time. The full data that will be posted on Friday will have undergone an extensive review process for twenty days involving the Recovery Board, federal agencies and direct communication with the recipients themselves. So the data posted this Friday will be more accurate - not less - than what was posted on October 15th.

FACT: The federal contract data AP surveyed represents just 2 percent of overall Recovery Act spending and just a fraction of what will be posted on Recovery.gov on Friday. It does not provide a statistically significant indication of the quality of the full reporting that will come on Friday.

"A Colorado company said it created 4,231 jobs with the help of President Barack Obama's economic recovery plan. The real number: fewer than 1,000."

FACT: The very first example AP cites was already corrected more than a week ago as part of the twenty-day review process and the change is in the final data posting being prepared for Friday. This item represents over 3,000 - or 60 percent - of the "nearly 5,000 jobs" AP uses to try to make its argument.

FACT: The company in question actually did hire more than 4,000 workers - but because the work was not full time, full year work, the rigorous standards at Recovery.gov don't count it as 4,000 workers. AP is wrong in saying that 4,000 workers is not a "real" number: 4,000 people got paychecks and got work thanks to the Recovery Act. The posting was erroneous because our higher standards only count the equivalent of full-time, full-year jobs as jobs "created or saved."

FACT: All recipients were given through October 30th to clarify and confirm their data - including those linked to federal contracts. Any conclusions drawn about the quality of that small portion of data as it was posted two weeks ago are simply premature.

"Officials at East Central Technical College in Douglas, Ga., said they now know they shouldn't have claimed 280 stimulus jobs linked to more than $200,000 to buy three semi-trucks and trailers for commercial driving instruction, and a modular classroom and bathroom for a health education program."

FACT: This item - which represents less than .06 percent of the total jobs reported was also already corrected more than a week ago as part of the twenty-day review process and the change is in the final data posting being prepared for Friday.

"The San Joaquin, Calif., Regional Rail Commission reported creating or saving 125 jobs as part of a stimulus project to lay railroad track. Because the project drew from two pools of money, the commission reported that figure twice, bringing the total to 250."

FACT: This item - which represents less than .04 percent of the total jobs reported - was also already corrected as part of the twenty-day review process and the change is in the final data posting being prepared for Friday.

"The Toledo, Ohio-based Koring Group also received two FCC contracts to help people make the switch to digital television. The company reported hiring 26 people for each of the two contracts, bringing its total jobs to 54 on the government's official count. But the company cited the same 26 workers for both contracts, meaning the same jobs were counted twice. The job count was further inflated because each job lasted only about two months, so each worker should have counted as one-sixth of a full-time job."

FACT: This item - which represents less than .01 percent of the total jobs reported - was also already corrected as part of the twenty-day review process and the change is in the final data posting being prepared for Friday.

"While the thousands of overstated jobs represent a tiny sliver of the overall economy, they represent a significant percentage of the initial employment count credited to the stimulus program."

FACT: The overestimate of "thousands" of jobs AP cites is out of hundreds of thousands of jobs that will be reported overall on Friday - the vast majority of which underwent the more extensive twenty-day vetting process.

FACT: Even if you remove the "nearly 5,000 jobs" from the total federal contracts job number, it is still in-line with government and private forecaster's estimates of about one million Recovery Act jobs overall to-date.

Posting its results late this afternoon at Recovery.gov, the White House claimed 640,329 jobs have been created or saved because of the $159 billion in stimulus funds allocated as of Sept. 30.

Officials acknowledged the numbers were not exact, saying that states and localities that reported the numbers have made mistakes.

In recent days, the Recovery Act board has been reviewing all the numbers, with many inaccurate ones having been posted. California's San Joaquin Regional Rail Commission received $5 million in stimulus funds to hire workers to build addition train track for the Union Pacific Railroad in an economically tarnished spot of the Golden State.

Brian Schmidt, director of planning and programming for the commission said that his staff originally reported to the Obama administration that the stimulus money saved 250 jobs. Then, realizing they had mistakenly double credited, they later changed that to 125 jobs. Tuesday, they updated it again to 74 jobs.

Ed DeSeve, senior advisor to the president for Recovery Act implementation, said he'd been "scrubbing" the job estimates so much since they came it at the beginning of the month that he now has "dishpan hands and my fingers are worn to the nub."

White House officials heralded the unparalleled transparency in reporting job numbers to the public, but acknowledged there is no consistent standard across states or localities, or among federal agencies giving out stimulus funds, in differentiating between a "saved" job and a "created" job.

The White House argues that the actual job number is actually larger than 640,000 -- closer to 1 million jobs when one factors in stimulus jobs added in October and, more importantly, jobs created indirectly, such as "the waitress who's still on the job," Vice President Biden said today.

So let's see. Assuming their number is right -- 160 billion divided by 1 million. Does that mean the stimulus costs taxpayers $160,000 per job?

Jared Bernstein, chief economist and senior economic advisor to the vice president, called that "calculator abuse."

He said the cost per job was actually $92,000 -- but acknowledged that estimate is for the whole stimulus package as of the end of 2010.

Vice President Biden heralded news this week of gross domestic product growth in the 3rd quarter of 3.5 percent, saying "the economic forecasters have attributed ... the vast bulk of this growth to the Economic Recovery Act -- the much-maligned and battered Economic Recovery Act. Put another way, without the Economic Recovery Act, it's very unlikely this economy would have expanded at all this last quarter. It may have even contracted."

DeSeve and Bernstein were not able to say how many of the 640,329 jobs were saved and how many were created. How do they know that government officials asking for stimulus funds to help prevent layoffs were legitimate?

"What we have to do is expect that our public officials are honest," DeSeve said. "I know that's a high bar."

Joining Biden at an event in which reporters were not permitted to ask questions, California Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said the money California has received "has created or saved 62,000 teachers' jobs; but not only teachers' jobs. Those are for administrators and professors. So there's again people that said, 'Well, we would have done something about that, anyway.' No, those teachers would have been gone if it wouldn't have been for the federal stimulus money. I just wanted to make sure you understand that."

Of the 640,329 jobs cited today, White House officials said 80,000 were in the construction sector and more than half -- 325,000 -- were education jobs, despite President Obama's claim in January that 90 percent of the stimulus jobs would be in the private sector. Bernstein said Mr. Obama's pledge was an assessment of the totality of the jobs saved or created by the end of 2010.

Officials pointed out that today's report did not include jobs saved or created by more than $80 billion in tax cuts, as well as other money in the $787 billion stimulus package, such as $250 stimulus checks for 54 million Americans.

SANTA MONICA, Calif. - October 29, 2009 - Today the Department of Transportation and White House chose to respond to an analysis Edmunds.com released Wednesday that looked at auto sales this year and what sales volumes would have been had the popular Cash for Clunkers program never existed.

At issue is one point of the analysis showing the taxpayer cost for every incremental vehicle sold was $24,000. To be clear, Edmunds.com is not disputing the government's statements regarding total voucher applications, vehicles sold or voucher values. The key question is how many of these sales would have occurred anyway.

Apparently, the $24,000 figure caught many by surprise. It shouldn't have. The truth is that consumer incentive programs are always hugely expensive when calculated by incremental sales - always in the tens of thousands of dollars. Cash for Clunkers was no exception.

The White House claims that our analysis was based on car sales on Mars and that on Earth, the marketplace is connected. We agree the marketplace is connected. In fact, that is exactly the basis of our analysis.

It is also claimed we missed the possibility that Cash for Clunkers generated excitement and consumers bought vehicles even if they didn't qualify for the program -- a claim that has been widely supported by anecdote but by little analysis. It does, after all, seem a bit odd that masses of consumers would elect to buy a vehicle because of a program for which they don't qualify -- doubly so when you add in the fact that prices shot up during Cash for Clunkers, creating a disincentive to buy.

Finally, the White House claims that the increase in fourth-quarter production reported by the car manufacturers can be attributed to Cash for Clunkers. But here is a better reason: the economy is recovering accompanied by improved car sales. No manufacturer increases production -- a decision with long-term consequences -- based on the 30-day sales blip triggered by an event like Cash for Clunkers.

With all respect to the White House, Edmunds.com thinks that instead of shooting the messenger, government officials should take heart from the core message of the analysis: the fundamentals of the auto marketplace are improving faster than the current sales numbers suggest.

Last Thursday, the Treasury Department tried to prevent Fox News from interviewing executive pay czar Kenneth Feinberg. But a funny thing happened on the way to the boycott. ABC, CBS, CNN and even NBC all refused to talk to Feinberg unless Fox was included. And so we were.

Incredibly, the American media supported Fox News, standing up for freedom of the press. That was a huge embarrassment for the White House, which is still trying to isolate FNC, and even liberal TV critics thinks that's wrong.

DAVID ZURAWIK, BALTIMORE SUN TV CRITIC: I think it's outrageous that the White House tried that, No. 1. That's my first reaction. My second reaction is I'm really cheered by the other members saying no, if Fox can't be part of it, we won't be part of it. What it's really about to me is the executive branch of the government trying to tell the press how it should behave.

Well, "Talking Points" has had problems with Mr. Zurawik in the past, but he's right on here. This whole thing is embarrassing. The president of the United States trying to decertify a news organization? I do not think that's ever happened in America.

Reports say White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel is behind the anti-Fox movement. We have not been able to confirm that, but whosoever doing it needs to wise up.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: I think this is really destructive. The - what happened today, I think, was extremely important, because in trying to ostracize and demonize Fox, the administration needs complicity from other news organizations. Otherwise it won't work.

And it hasn't worked. All of this nonsense is making Barack Obama look bad, and it's helping Fox News in the ratings.

But the bigger question is power. That's what this is all about, ladies and gentlemen. The White House does not like the fact that FNC dominates cable news and often sets the agenda for what other news agencies are covering. The ACORN story shocked the Obama administration. So did the tea party coverage. The president doesn't like it.

But enough is enough. Come on, Mr. President. You have better things to do than continue this petty feud. You, Mr. Emanuel, Mr. Axelrod, Mr. Gibbs, even the White House chef are all welcome on "The Factor" any time. You got a beef? Let us hear it. As we proved in our first interview with Barack Obama, he will be treated fairly here.

BAIER: Charles, you saw the president speaking to sailor and naval aviators and giving this speech that he won't put them in harm's way until the strategy is set. He has said that numerous times now. Today he went out and spoke in front of military personnel.

Is it a case that he is making effectively as this decision-making process continues?

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: I think he's a little bit defensive because it has been a drawn-out process. Drawn-out decision making is OK, but not in public.

But I think it is reaching an end. I think it's correct that they are postponing the decision until after the elections in Afghanistan, but perhaps it is only a coincidence, but that's also the elections in the United States.

This is going to be unpopular either way, and I think they would rather have a decision after the November odd-year election.

BAIER: But are you saying this is a political calculation domestically for liberals in New Jersey or Virginia if the decision is let's go with the full troop contingent?

KRAUTHAMMER: Suggesting that cynicism is possible in this administration. That is as far as I will go.

But on the substance of this, what we heard from Senator Kerry, and he's coming out now rather strongly against sort of the maximum McChrystal plan is interesting.

He is a serious guy. He has spoken a lot with Karzai. He points out that we have a problem in governance in Afghanistan. He's absolutely right. But McChrystal is arguing that unless you reverse the spiral of what is happening militarily on the ground now, governance isn't going to matter because you aren't going to have anybody to govern.

And that's the urgency of the request for the real increase or the surge, the same way that in Iraq you had to reverse the downward spiral of the Al Qaeda insurgency, especially in Anbar, in order to allow the emergence of a local strong government. It has got to be done now in Afghanistan, and that's what McChrystal has been arguing.

The names released Friday include business leaders and lobbyists with a lot to gain or lose from Obama policies. They include Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates (whose foundation is pushing for changes in teacher pay), former AIG chairman Maurice Greenberg, Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson, Chevron CEO David O'Reilly, Citigroup's Vikram Pandit, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, JP Morgan's James Dimon, Bank of America CEO Kenneth Lewis, John Stumpf of Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley's John Mack, State Street bank's Ron Logue, BNY Mellon's Robert Kelly, labor leader Andrew Stern of the Service Employees International Union (22 visits), American Bankers Association CEO Ed Yingling, community bankers president Camden Fine, and lobbyists Heather and Anthony Podesta, whose brother John Podesta led Obama's transition team.

Besides Gates, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt are also on the list. (Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC. One of NBC's parents is GE.)

Advocates and nonprofit leaders include National Organization for Women President Kim Gandy, and Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which is interested in health policy.

Democratic donor and businessman George Soros visited with White House aides twice.

Political figures include former Sen. Thomas Daschle, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, former Gov. Howard Dean, Sen. Al Franken, former Vice President Al Gore, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, and Democratic strategist Steve Elmendorf.

Celebrities at the White House include Oprah Winfrey, actors Brad Pitt, George Clooney and Denzel Washington, and tennis star Serena Williams. Journalists include Paul Krugman, the New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize winner in economics.

Conservative religious leader Gary Bauer visited, as did liberal civil rights leaders Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.

The White House warns that many names that may appear familiar - and controversial - do not in fact refer to the most famous people to carry those names. Jeremiah Wright is on the list, but it's not the president's former pastor. This Michael Jordan is not the basketball player. This Michael Moore is not a filmmaker. The William Ayers who took a group tour of the White House isn't the former radical from Chicago who figured so prominently in the 2008 campaign. And the Angela Davis on the list has a different middle initial than the activist and former fugitive.

The White House could have avoided some of that sort of confusion by providing more information on the visitors, such as an employer name and the city they hail from. For example, is the Shawn Carter who attended a poetry reading the same one who goes by Jay-Z and had campaigned for Obama?

Personally, my biggest concern is George Soros, whom I believe is one of the most influential and dangerous people in the United States.

Another month under President Obama, another 263,000 jobs lost. It was not supposed to be this way. Barack Obama promised America that, if elected President and given control over the nation's economic policies, he would create 3.5 million jobs, beginning with the enactment of a massive economic stimulus package. Today's release of dismal employment figures by the Department of Labor show that the nation is still waiting.

So far in his term in office, employment has dropped by about 3.4 million jobs, while the unemployment rate has hit 9.8 percent, the highest in 26 years.[1] The President repeatedly pledged to create 3.5 million new jobs by the end of 2010. He has also repeatedly emphasized accountability and measuring his presidency by results. The President's jobs promise means total employment should be at least 138.6 million by 2010, leaving him with a total deficit to close that now stands at 7.6 million jobs.[2] By his own standard, these results attest that Obama's policies have so far failed to deliver.

Fortunately, the economy's natural recuperative powers spurred by powerful, effective stimulus from the Federal Reserve mean the recession may be ending in the sense that overall output and incomes are stabilizing and the recovery may be on the horizon. Even so, job losses are likely to continue until the recovery accelerates markedly, perhaps sometime in 2010 or even 2011. Meanwhile, the President's policies-such as unprecedented spending-driven deficits and threatened massive tax and regulatory increases-will continue to put downward pressure on employment rather than help to reach his jobs target.

President Obama's repetition of the 3.5 million jobs figure demonstrates that this was a serious promise, and the figure itself was apparently chosen with care. The original target set in the fall of 2008 was 2.5 million jobs, but as employment fell at the end of 2008, he increased the employment target by 1 million to 3.5 million in December 2008.

The President's original jobs claim was soon followed by a claim that the economic stimulus had "saved or created" 150,000 jobs in the first half of the year, this at a time when employment fell by 1.6 million. This claim was followed by another that the economic stimulus would save or create 600,000 jobs this summer, but in fact the economy lost almost 1 million jobs.

When Obama made his 3.5 million jobs promise, employment stood at about 135.1 million according to the Department of Labor's most commonly used measure. This establishes the Obama jobs target for December 2010 at 138.6 million. It also establishes a basic trajectory for employment the economy would need to approximate to hit that target.

According to the latest jobs report, total U.S. employment fell to 130.9 million in September. The September Obama jobs deficit-the difference between the target and actual employment-therefore stands at 7.6 million

Mathematically, closing the Obama jobs gap would require monthly growth in employment of 477,000 over the 16 months between September 2009 and December 2010. The greatest 16-month average increase in employment in modern American history (373,000) occurred during the peak of the Reagan boom, concluding in December 1984 and dwarfing even the strongest similar period of job growth during the Clinton Administration.[3] Closing the Obama jobs deficit would require significantly faster monthly job growth than ever before.

However, it is reasonable to hope that the Obama jobs promise can be kept because the workforce and the economy are much larger today than they were in 1984. This means that the job growth relative to the size of the workforce can be less than that experienced under Reagan and yet still close the Obama jobs deficit.

Specifically, Obama needs to average job growth going forward of about 0.36 percent of the workforce compared to the 0.39 percent of the workforce growth under Reagan. This highlights the remarkable force of the Reagan recovery driven by spending restraint, tax cuts, support for free trade, and less regulation. But it also underscores that if President Obama pursues similar economic growth policies, he could conceivably close his jobs deficit and make good on his promise.

The centerpiece of Obama's short-term stimulus program is a massive $787 billion fiscal program he signed into law last spring. By all accounts, this legislation was poorly crafted. However, poorly crafted or not, as a short-term economic stimulus it was doomed from the outset as it is based on the erroneous assumption that government spending and tax cuts can increase total demand in a slack economy.

This theory ignores the simplest of realities: Government spending must be financed. So to finance the resulting deficit spending, government must borrow from private markets, thereby reducing private demand by the same amount as deficit spending increases public demand.[4]

The federal government can stimulate the economy in the short term not by shuffling demand across the economy through wasteful deficit spending but by improving incentives and the general economic environment. Individuals and businesses across the nation see tremendous opportunities for starting new businesses, for investment, for hiring new workers, for expanding into new markets. Many are holding back, however, due to concerns about the economy, while others are holding back due to concerns about the threatening policies from Washington, and others are holding back because existing tax and regulatory burdens are already excessive.

At this point, the only measure growing faster than the President's jobs deficit is his budget deficit, which is expected to reach about $1.6 trillion in 2009, or almost four times the level in 2008.[5] Under President Obama's budget, spending grows so rapidly despite massive tax hikes that federal debt is officially projected to grow by $9 trillion over the next decade, while a more reasonable projection suggests the growth in debt will be closer to $13 trillion. Such irresponsible fiscal policies cast a pall on the confidence of credit markets and businesses preparing for the future.[6]

The budget also calls for a massive new cap-and-trade system to allow the government to micromanage the economy while raising hundreds of billions in new taxes on American businesses. This legislation has already passed the House of Representatives and is now heading to the Senate, and would severely hamper the economy for many years to come.[7]

Health care reform is also high on the President's agenda. Health care reform is badly needed, but what is developing thus far in the House and the Senate is much worse than current law. The President has called for a reform that would cost around $900 billion, and both the House and Senate bills appear to meet that test, and much of this spending would be offset with errant spending reductions and tax increases on individuals and businesses.[8]

These multiple threats posed by Obama's policies badly degrade the economic environment for investing and hiring and delay the needed process of substantial job creation.

Effectively stimulating the economy requires more than not depressing it, however. It requires reducing impediments to starting new businesses, hiring, working, and investing. That means:

* Cutting spending to take pressure off of interest rates and leave more of the nation's productive resources in the hands of the more productive private sector.

This is the path President Obama must pursue now to close the jobs deficit and make good on his promise to drive employment to 138.6 million jobs by the end of 2010.

J. D. Foster, Ph.D, is Norman B. Ture Senior Fellow in the Economics of Fiscal Policy in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.

Here is the original story, replete with pictures of the art pieces at this exhibit (warning; the images are quite pornographic—I only include these images so you see clearly what this man supports and believes in):

I have taken a few tests to determine what political spectrum I fall within, and find the questions to be irritating and rarely do they deal with important issues. As a conservative, I find that they often overemphasize trivial issues or stereotypes. The following site compares liberal and conservative positions on some important issues and seems to me, from a conservative view, to be fair and balanced. I would like to hear if a liberal feels the same way.

30 members of Congress under ethics investigations (some of which have been dropped):

Chris Wallace interviews Rush Limbaugh (to be honest, I have not seen this yet; but Rush always gives a good interview).

WALLACE: Now to our interview with Rush Limbaugh. Whether you love him or can't stand him, he is a major player on the American political scene. For three hours a day, five days a week, he tells listeners exactly what he thinks on more than 600 radio stations across the country.

We traveled to Palm Beach this week where Rush does his show for a rare interview discussing everything from politics to whether he's really worth that huge amount of money he makes.

WALLACE: This week it will be one year since Barack Obama was elected president. In that time, what has he done for and to the country?

RUSH: I think it's all to. I don't think there's any for. I'm -- Chris, I'm -- I'm really, really worried. We've never seen this kind of radical leadership at such a high level of power in the -- in the country.

I believe that the economy is under siege, is being destroyed. Anybody with any economic literacy would not do one thing this administration's done to try to revitalize the private sector. They're destroying it.

And I have to think that it may be on purpose, because this is just outrageous, what is happening -- a denial of liberty, an attack on freedom.

I mean, just -- just a couple days ago, they talked about these 650,000 jobs that they've created or saved. There's no such thing as a saved job. Besides that, they've destroyed jobs. They've lost 3.3 million jobs in this country since Obama's stimulus plan, and it's going to get worse.

WALLACE: But -- but wait a minute. How about save the country from a financial abyss, 3.5 percent growth in the third quarter in GDP?

RUSH: There wasn't any growth in the private sector. That 3.5 percent came from two things -- government spending on "Cash for Clunkers" -- they just moved fourth quarter auto sales into the third quarter -- and the first-time home buyer thing.

GDP equals CIG -- that is, consumers, the investment of business, and government. And it's all G. It's all government. There is no private sector growth. There were no new jobs being created. We're losing them.

RUSH: I don't know how safe we are. Iran is nuking up. Everything that we've asked them to do they are forgetting. They're not going to move their plutonium, their enriched plutonium -- uranium out of the country like they said so.

We can't make up our minds what we're going to do in Afghanistan. We're dithering there. I don't -- I don't think we're any better off in any way it could be measured.

RUSH: Just -- he's (inaudible) he's a child. I think he's -- he's got a -- a five-minute career. He was in the Senate for 150 days. He was a community organizer in Chicago for however number of years.

He really has no experience running anything. He's very young. I think he's got an out-of-this-world ego. He's very narcissistic. And he's able to focus all attention on him all the time. That -- that description is simply a way to cut through the noise and say he's immature, inexperienced, in over his head.

WALLACE: Let's talk about a couple of the big issues the president is dealing with now -- first of all, Afghanistan. You suggest that he is taking all of this time to decide what to do in Afghanistan to keep his left-wing base on board for health care reform.

RUSH: Well, it's partly that, but I also don't think he cares much about it. I think once...

RUSH: No, I -- no, see, this is -- I know this is going to sound controversial, but I don't think he cares that -- if he -- Chris, if he cared about -- we've got soldiers and their families worrying about what we're going to do. The general on the ground said we need some more troops.

The policy that he implemented in March he now doesn't like and is trying to figure out how best to make everybody happy here politically on his side of the aisle and also for his image. Democrats have a tendency to be seen as weak on defense, so he's battling with that.

But again, if he cared about victory -- remember, he said about Afghanistan victory is not something he's comfortable with, the concept. It reminds him of the Japanese surrendering on the USS Missouri. It made him very uncomfortable.

He wants to manage this rather than achieve victory. He says these things. I don't know if people actually listen and have them register when he does.

WALLACE: But you say you don't know that he really cares. Do you at least give him credit for going to Dover, Delaware to honor the remains of soldiers, dead soldiers, who came back from Afghanistan?

RUSH: You know, see, the politically correct thing to say here would be, "Oh, yes, I am very impressed that President Obama decided to go show his concern for the remains, troops who've given their lives for freedom in this country."

It was a photo op. It was a photo op precisely because he's having big-time trouble on this whole Afghanistan dithering situation. He found one family that would allow photos to be taken. None of the others did.

And of course, when you have a sycophantic media following you around, able to promote and amplify whatever you want, then he can create the impression that he has all this great concern, but the -- Bush did this...

WALLACE: Well, but the argument would be that it was political of Bush not to be seen with the coffins because he was trying to hide it, hide the cost of war from the American people.

RUSH: Well, I have the benefit of knowing George Bush a little bit, and I -- I -- I've seen him cry talking about missions that he's ordered. I think he has a great, profound, deep respect for the families of all military personnel, and those who have died...

WALLACE: But you don't think that Barack Obama has a profound respect for our soldiers and the families that are giving the sacrifice?

RUSH: Chris, throughout the Iraq war, it was Barack Obama and the Democrat Party which actively sought the defeat of the U.S. military. They convened hearings and accused General Petraeus of lying. They said the surge would not work.

Harry Reid stands up, waves the white flag -- this war is lost. Jack Murtha is out saying our Marines at Haditha are guilty of rape. John Kerry is accusing our Marines of committing terrorism acts by going into the homes of Iraqis at midnight in the dark terrorizing, looking for Al Qaida or whoever was there.

Yeah. I mean, look. I hate to be honest with you here, but I do question their commitment to national security. I question their commitment to the U.S. military. They'll put their political survival and their political power being gained over anything else. They'll use anybody and throw anybody away in order to achieve it.

WALLACE: You also say that the president should give the generals, the commanders on the ground, as many troops as they need to win.

But a staunch conservative like George Will says, "Look, this -- Afghanistan has been a dysfunctional country. It's a corrupt country," and that we can beat the Taliban and beat Al Qaida without this huge commitment of new troops.

RUSH: Well, I don't know that. I don't -- I don't have the benefit of knowledge that George Will has, so I trust the experts, and to me they're the people in the U.S. military.

But these are -- these are -- you know, the surge in Iraq -- same thing. We went -- it worked. The Democrats were the ones opposed to it. They said it would fail, it wouldn't work. And by all measure it did.

Now the basic same theories are being suggested for Afghanistan and -- I don't know. The thing that bothers me about this is we're there. You know, it's -- whether we should have gone or what we've done heretofore is now irrelevant. There's only one thing to do, win. you know, what about Afghanistan? Easy. We win, they lose.

WALLACE: You have made no secret of the fact you oppose the public option, government-run health insurance to compete with private insurers. With tens of millions of Americans still uninsured, do you think that the government has any moral obligation to find some way to cover them?

RUSH: There is a way to insure the uninsured without doing any of what we're doing. If that were the objective, then I'd be full for it.

This is not about insuring the uninsured. This is not about health care. This is about stealing one-sixth of the U.S. private sector and putting it under the control of federal government.

And when they get this health care bill, if they do, that's the easiest, fastest way for them to be able to regulate every aspect of human behavior, because it will all have some related cost to health care -- what you drive, what you eat, where you live, what you do.

And there'll be penalties for violating regulations. It's going to be the biggest snatch of freedom and liberty that has yet occurred in this country.

WALLACE: And in 30 seconds, how do you insure the insured without this big overhaul?

RUSH: Well, I've run the numbers, and the real number of uninsured that want insurance is 12 million. Take some of the unspent stimulus. We have 85 percent of the stimulus unspent. Take some of it. For 35 to $40 billion a year, you could insure those people, not $2 trillion, not 1.4 -- if that's the objective, do it now.

WALLACE: ... to tell people, "You're going to get health insurance, and if you don't get it, you're going to pay a penalty?"

RUSH: I do not think it's constitutional. Chris, this -- this is -- these are dark days for the country. This is deadly serious stuff. This is a total attempt to remake the country as founded and constituted. And it -- it worries me greatly.

WALLACE: Well, George Heplin (ph) sent this, "If President Obama would agree to an interview, what would be your first question?"

RUSH: Why are you doing this? Why? What in -- what -- what do you not like about this country that makes you want to inflict this kind of damage on it?

WALLACE: Lucille Golman sent this question, "Did you vote for John McCain in the 2008 presidential election?"

RUSH: Yes, but you weigh the two. I don't think -- there are a lot of people, Chris, that are saying there's no difference in two parties. I know a lot of people think that, and they're -- and they really, really believe it.

But I don't know of any Republican who would try to take over one-sixth of the U.S. economy. I don't know one Republican who would put forth this -- this irresponsible cap and trade bill. I don't know one Republican who would actually do that as something he initiated.

WALLACE: Let's talk about the state of the GOP. A recent Fox News poll found that the approval rating for the president has dropped to 49 percent, but meanwhile, only 25 percent of people approve of congressional Republicans.

As voters have growing doubts about the president and his policies, why aren't they turning to the opposition? Is there something that the -- that the Republican Party lacks in the way of a positive, affirmative agenda?

RUSH: The Republican Party needs to learn something. If it goes country club blue-blood moderate, it's going to lose. If it goes Reagan conservative and commits to it, it's going to win landslides.

RUSH: Well, right -- right now there's no central Republican leader to turn to, and there's no central Republican message. The Republican messages is sort of muddied. What do they stand for? Right now it's opposition to Obama.

RUSH: Well, it may be in 2010. I mean, I -- I actually do think that there's going to be a revolt against the Democrat Party and against Obama, even if voters in 2010 have nothing to vote for.

WALLACE: So do you think that the Republican Party -- do you see it as a big-tent party or small-tent party?

WALLACE: But -- but you sound like you're kind of saying to the moderates, the -- particularly on social issues, "If we lose you, too bad."

RUSH: Well, I look at -- when I say big tent, I look at the United States of America, so I -- I -- I'm an American. I love this country. I want everybody in it to do well.

The conservative message is not, "OK, Hispanics, we have this plan for you. Women, we have this plan for you." That's what the Republican Party's trying to do, and emulate group politics. And the history is that -- you know, why be Democrat lite? Let them handle that.

Let's go after the big tent that is the country, and let's go get every person in this country -- I don't care what their race is, what their gender is, what their sexual orientation.

If they are told that there is somebody that's going to lead this country or party that is actually going to strengthen them, give them the tools, get out of their way and let them make this country work, the Republican Party can attract a majority like they haven't seen since the '80s.

WALLACE: ... they write just as you found your place as the triumphant champion of the age of Reagan, that Beck is tapping into the fear and anger on the right today.

Is that why you think he's struck such a chord, because he taps into the fear and the anger of the conservatives today?

RUSH: There is a lot of fear. There's a -- there's a tremendous amount of fear in the country over what is happening in Washington to individual liberty and freedom. He may well have tapped into that.

The anger -- I think that's -- that's sometimes overplayed, because it's become a cliche for the left to say angry white men as a way of denigrating conservative energy and ideology. But there's no question there's a lot of anger. And if -- and if he's tapped into that, I wouldn't be surprised.

WALLACE: When you look at Glenn Beck and you see this explosion, what do you feel?

RUSH: No, no, no, no, no. I mean, my radio audience is astronomically high. I'm -- look it, in 1988 there was nobody doing what I'm doing. Nobody. You had -- CNN was the only cable network, and you had the three networks and the newspapers.

And now look. Now look what's out -- all of this conservative media, conservative talk radio, television, Fox News, the conservative blogosphere. I mean, I -- in one way, I could -- I could -- if I wanted to have my ego to be as big as Obama's is, I could say, "Look what I created."

So any success out there on my side, conservative media -- damn, if it's going to help us get this country back, bring more in.

WALLACE: Let's talk about you. You said recently, "I actually thank God for my addiction to pain pills because I learned more about myself in rehab than I would have ever learned otherwise." What did you learn from drug rehab?

RUSH: One of the -- one of the things that I'd always had trouble with in my life was trying to be what other people expected me to be or wanted me to be, in my personal life, because I wanted to be liked.

And everybody's raised to want to be liked and to want to be loved. Nobody wants to grow up being hated. Now, interestingly, my radio career -- I don't care. You know, I -- I figured that out. It was a tough thing, Chris, to learn to take as a measure of success being hated, you know, by 20 or 30 percent of the country. I mean, that -- because nobody's raised for that.

But in my personal life, what I -- the thing I learned most was that the only way to have real intimacy with people, real solid relationships, is to be who you are. That will attract the kind of people worthy of having intimate relationships with, good friendships with.

WALLACE: And without putting you on the couch, are you saying that the addiction came from some sense of personal inadequacy?

RUSH: Oh, of course. Yeah. It -- I wasn't good enough. I was masking unhappiness elsewhere, not dealing with the real reasons I was unhappy in my personal life. I had -- I had never experienced the kind of euphoria that I got from a pain pill.

I think the only time that I really -- with all the success I've had, the only time I've had the kind of euphoria is when I made the high school football team as a sophomore. I was never prouder of myself.

But all my career achievements did not create that for me, because it's -- you've got to maintain it every day. It's not something you earn and that it lasts forever. And I don't look back. I don't stop and think about what I've accomplished because there's always tomorrow, so I don't have time for the euphoria. I don't have time for that.

Man, am I -- it's -- I'm too busy trying to meet everybody's expectations tomorrow. So the pain pills came along and they masked all these feelings of inadequacy that I had. Now, after just seven weeks of this place in Arizona, I have zero feelings of inadequacy.

It has not been replaced by an irresponsible ego. It's just a confidence in who I am.

WALLACE: You signed a new contract last year -- eight years, reportedly $400 million.

RUSH: It could be true. You know, I'm a -- a guy who earns a percentage of what I generate every year. There are some guarantees, but I'll tell -- the $400 million is not guaranteed. I have to earn that. So far...

WALLACE: I think you're a great broadcaster. How can you possibly be worth that kind of money?

RUSH: Very simply. Value is determined by what somebody will pay you to do what you do. I'm probably worth more. I'm not complaining. Do not -- do not misunderstood.

But you know, this whole question -- see, because I'm a capitalist. You're worth whatever you can get. You're worth whatever your value is, and that's determined by what somebody's willing to pay you for it.

And the only reason I get that money is because the people who invest in me get results beyond their expectations.

WALLACE: Let's talk about the NFL and the decision to drop you as a possible owner. What about the argument, "Look, this is a bunch of billionaire owners sitting around and saying, 'Rush Limbaugh isn't good for business?'" Is that the free market?

RUSH: Yeah, but that didn't happen. It never was allowed to get to that point. My name was leaked as being part of a group. Roger Goodell, the commissioner, goes out and cites a six-year-old quote from -- that I made about Donovan McNabb, got it all wrong.

Jim Irsay of the -- I call him "Hearsay" because he's repeating things that weren't true -- the owner of the Indianapolis Colts, joins the chorus. I never got -- I never got past first base. I mean, we...

RUSH: Well, I think it's actually about the fact that the NFL is about to lose its current collective bargaining agreement with the players.

And guess who happens to be the new executive director of the players association? A guy named DeMaurice Smith, who is Obama. He's part of his transition team. He has -- he has suggested that the Congress, the White House, might get involved in stop a player-owner lockout.

So I -- I think -- and he got involved in this, too, you know. He was out participating in the spreading of quotes I didn't say, warning Goodell and the owners what might -- I think this was a warning shot across the bow, saying to the NFL, "Look, we're going to be close to running this league, not you. We don't want this guy here."

And I think -- I don't -- I don't really take this personally, but I do think it was a bunch of cowardice all the way around.

WALLACE: You started talking about Vice President Biden this week, and you said to your producers, "Now, get the bleep button, because I may go over the line," and then you censored yourself. So I'll ask you, what do you think of Joe Biden?

RUSH: Pretty much everything. I mean, he was a guy in July who says, "Well, we -- we guessed wrong on the stimulus jobs." We guessed wrong. Anybody with a brain could have told you the stimulus plan wasn't going to work. I mean, he's a walking comedy of errors.

WALLACE: Sarah Palin -- you say that you admire her backbone. Do you really think she's ready to be president?

RUSH: Well, yes, I do. See, I am a -- one thing I do not do is follow conventional wisdom, and the conventional wisdom of Sarah Palin is she's not smart enough, she needs to bone up on the issues, she's a little unsophisticated, she -- Alaska, where's that? -- doesn't have the pedigree.

I've seen -- she's the only thing that provided any kind of a spark for the Republican Party. This is not an endorsement, but I do have profound respect for Sarah Palin.

There are not very many politicians who have been through what she's through -- been put through and still able to smile and be ebullient and upbeat. I mean, this woman, I think, is pretty tough.

WALLACE: Finally, some politics. You predict a possible blood bath for Democrats in 2010.

RUSH: I really do. I know that there is an eruption waiting to happen at the ballot box. I know that a majority of the people in this country are opposed to every single major agenda item that Obama has proposed and is trying to get passed.

The mainstream media doesn't do it, doesn't know it. They think they need a visa to go to Missouri. You know, they -- they're not in touch with what's happening out -- and in fact, if they find out that there's this kind of angst, they look at the voters with contempt -- "Well, you're not sophisticated to understand how brilliant Obama is and how magical his agenda" -- they don't want any part of it.

And it's going to be bigger than anybody thinks, especially -- especially -- if health care gets passed, and if they get cap and trade, and they start going down this global warming fiasco track and get something passed on that. There will be a revolt at the polls.

WALLACE: If he does win, how is Rush Limbaugh going to handle seven more years of Barack Obama?

RUSH: You know, I'm glad you asked me that, because one of the questions I always get is, "Rush, isn't Obama -- aren't these Democrats in power good for your business?" The way I go about my business, I'm out to get the highest ratings I get every day.

I'm going to attract the largest audience I can regardless the news. It's my -- it's my talent that draws the crowd. The news is incidental to it. No. I'm worried, seriously worried, about the future of the country.

I would never put my personal success in front of what I think is something that's disastrous for the country.

RUSH: Well, it would be painful. It would literally be painful. This is -- every day you get up and there's a new potential threat to liberty and freedom being launched by this man and his administration.

And it's kind of -- be -- I mean, I -- some days I'm in -- I'm in radio and some days I feel like I'm in the trenches in a war -- no bullets being fired, but trenches in a war. I mean, it's really -- it's really intense when -- you know, I love this country.

To have this kind of passion, and my -- you know, I want -- Paul Revere. I want as many people to hear what I think the problems are, because I believe the people of this country eventually will make it -- make it work and get what they want. I do believe in the Democratic process and the vote.

[This is something which I was not aware of...I am assuming what he is saying here is true. This is the essence of what Rush is saying: Gross domestic product equals the sum of consumption by consumers, investment by business, and spending by government. Is that true? Our GDP is not based on business investment and growth alone?]

RUSH: Barack Obama today out at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building and he's talking to small business owners about health insurance reform and the economy. I actually think every sentence that he said to these guys began with F-you. They don't know it, but it did. He's out there promising the millionaires, these small business owners, these millionaires, that it won't cost them a dime and all this is going to save them money. He is insulting their intelligence. We have a couple sound bites. Here is number one.

OBAMA: I am gratified that our economy grew in the third quarter of this year. The 3.5% growth in the third quarter is the largest three-month gain we have seen in two years. This is obviously welcome news and an affirmation that this recession is abating and the steps we've taken have made a difference.

RUSH: They're not. Look, you can try to cover up 10% unemployment all you want with a phony GDP number of 3.5%, you can go out there and say you saved the economy, but there are no jobs. Obama is gratified, but by his own benchmark his economy is still failing. Now, let me see if I can put this GDP number into context for you, 'cause it's phony. It is a fake number. Gross domestic product needs to be understood as the sum of three things: consumption by consumers, investment by business, and spending by government, CIG. Consumption, investment, spending by government. So they say the total GDP went up 3.5%. But was there any new consumption by consumers? No. Was there any new investment by business? No. Was there spending by government? Yes. That's the G. The increase is in G, spending by government.

There was no investment in business. There was no consumption by consumers. You've seen all the numbers. Home sales down; consumer spending down. There was no economic growth. What happened here, you had the Clash for Clunkers fiasco and now the Edmunds.com bunch estimates that that program cost taxpayers $24,000 for every car sold, and then there was that first time home buyers fraud, all kinds of government spending which was government borrowing. So the government spending sector goes up, and they, oh, the economy grew by 3.5%. It did not. Government grew. All that's happened here is that money has been shifted from taxpayers today and tomorrow into Obama approval ratings today.

RUSH: I want to take another stab at this GDP thing, because checking e-mail during the break, "What do you mean, Rush, you have never said that gross domestic product increases in the past were fake. You're just anti-Obama." No, no, no, no. I am anti-Obama, but don't you find this suspicious right before some elections hit next week? You know that this number is going to be revised downward later this month and nobody is going to pay any attention to it. But folks, there is no economic growth, at least in the private sector, and that's what everybody cares about. The private sector is where you and I operate. The private sector is where you and I test the waters. It's where we pursue the American dream. Gross domestic product equals the sum of consumption by consumers, investment by business, and spending by government, so the total goes up by three-and-a-half percent, it seems like growth, but all the increase is in G, spending by government, financed by an increasing deficit. It's fake.

Look at it this way. It's called the Keynesian fallacy. If I buy a refrigerator, that's a real transaction. It counts toward C, consumption. If I own a business and I buy a new machine tool or a forklift or whatever, that's real also. It counts toward I, investment. Real recoveries are led by consumption and investment, and there ain't any of that going on, I'm sorry. I wish there were. Now, the Keynesian fallacy is based on the multiplier theory -- I've done my economic homework on this -- and it is that government spending causes growth. That's what Obama believes, that's what all these liberals believe, the government spending, that's the engine. They think government creates jobs. They think government does all these wonderful things. The private sector is where all the fraud takes place. The private sector is where all the cheating goes on, the private sector is where the real people get cheated by the big shots on Wall Street and ExxonMobil and Big Oil, Big Pharma, big whatever. They think government is the engine. And so when it grows, ooh, baby, we're smoking, cool. That's the Keynesian fallacy.

Now, government spending could cause growth if the money is spent on certain things like infrastructure and keeping us safe. But then the growth that it causes comes from the consequences later that increase in consumption and investment. Now, this growth that they're talking about here today, this GDP number, is just an accounting trick. Suppose I borrow $10,000 on my credit card, and then I tell my wife, "Look, honey, here's the $10,000, I just got a raise." And then I go out and I spend that income on a new car or boat or whatever. You know, my wife, my girlfriend, whatever, would hit me with a chair. Borrowing money and spending it is not increased income. It's sort of like baseline budgeting, if I can remind you of that lecture. Let's say you go and buy a car, you're looking at buying a car, and you want to spend, oh, $70,000 on a car.

So you go to some dealerships, start kicking the tires, look around. You go to Mercedes, you go to Ford, go to Chrysler, go to GM. And the car you end up liking costs $50,000, not 70. And you tell your family, we just saved 20 grand, when you didn't. You just spent 50. It's the same thing here. You borrow $10,000, you go spend it on something, and you tell yourself you got a raise, your income went up. That's what's happened here with this GDP number. This 3.5% growth is all in government, and as we know government doesn't have any money. Government's printing money. We're running a deficit of $1.4 trillion this year. We don't have any money. So this growth is fake, it is fraudulent, it is phony, it doesn't exist, there is no growth, and Obama himself even admitted it out there.

CALLER: I'd like to speak to you a little bit about the first hour when you were talking about the gross domestic product equation. There's actually another element in that equation and that is net exports, and since Bernanke, Geithner, and Obama got in office they've been exploding the amount of currency being printed, and that has massively devalued our dollar. When you devalue our dollar you basically make our products overseas cheap to the Europeans, the Japanese and whoever will buy them. And so the way I see it, the only two people that are really benefiting from all this stimulus stuff is our government, who's on a spending spree, and the foreigners are getting all of our quality products at a very, very cheaper price, because we have a devalued dollar.

RUSH: You know, exports, there's no question exports are a function, but I'd rather focus on exports when talking about the trade deficit. My formula for explaining this fraudulent, fake growth number, 3.5% today, I'm not going to tamper with it 'cause it was brilliant. It's the most sensible, easy to understand explanation of what GDP is. GDP equals CIG: consumption, investment, government. Government spending is also part of GDP. Now, the growth that we've had, that they announced 3.5%, it's all from government spending, it's all from government borrowing. There is no consumption increase; there is no investment, businesses investing. There aren't any inventories. Try to go out and buy something, they'll have to order it for you.

RUSH: Here's the latest from Reuters: "It seems the financial crisis isn't all doom and gloom: one in four people are glad the world's economy slumped like it did, because it helped them realize their priorities in life, according to a global survey. Market research firm Synovate polled around 11,400 people across the world." I wish I were good enough with figures to understand what percentage of six billion 11,400 is. I want to know the margin of error on this worldwide poll.

"Market research firm Synovate polled around 11,400 people across the world and found more than half had permanently changed their attitudes toward money over the last 12 months." Well, maybe those people are made up of those who think they don't need money now because the government's going to take care of them. "Another 47 percent, however, said they were looking forward to being able to spend freely again." Well, good. Some people are still alive. Twenty-five percent are glad the economy slumped. Let me tell you something. If you're going to say this, if you're gonna put out a poll saying 25% of the people are happy the economy is slumped, you gotta credit Bush because Obama and everybody are blaming him. Hee, hee, hee.

RUSH: Okay, as always, it is up to me to provide context for the people who claim to be professional journalists and are aware of everything. Now, the setup for this, of course, is that I was libeled and slandered by countless members of the media, fabricated quotes, made-up quotes I never stated, never uttered, never wrote, nothing, were repeated all over this country by sportswriters, television cable hosts and so forth. After we proved to them that I didn't do it they retracted it a week later, after the damage, and many of them said, "It still doesn't matter, we know Limbaugh thinks it anyway."

So last Friday, I get a note from a friend who says, "You ought to see what's on this blog." I looked at it, and it was Obama, his thesis from Columbia, "so-called Founders," didn't like what they did with the Constitution, there wasn't enough talk about distribution of wealth and so forth. I said, "Well, this has a ring of truth to it," because we've got Obama on radio from Chicago 2001 complaining about the Supreme Court not doing enough about redistribution. So we ran with it, made a big deal out of it in the first hour. In the second hour, I got a note saying, "Hey, Rush, we looked at this, we can't back this up, we can't find any actual sourcing for this." So at that point I warned the audience that it may not be true, that we are still checking it.

Shortly thereafter I learned that the whole thing was made up, it was a satire piece on an obscure website. Then I said, "Okay, folks, I have to tell you, it's satire, there's no evidence that Obama ever wrote this, but, Media Tweak of the Day, I don't care, I know he thinks it anyway because I've got audio of Obama saying it, talking about the Supreme Court." And we all got a great laugh about it because I corrected it immediately, I explained that it was a hoax, or was satire and then to tweak the media I said, "But I don't care, I'm sticking with it because I know he thinks it anyway." So I dished out to Obama what the whole media did to me and I dished it back at the media as well. And Koko at the website called me on Friday here, e-mailed me, said, "Look, you want me to leave this thing up?" I said "Yes, leave it on the website as is, so these idiot media people who want to find out what actually happened can go in and take the time to read it and see it. And leave the original piece up where I got the first information that this was something he had written in his thesis." So here is yesterday morning, Monday morning, 1010WINS in New York, a montage of correspondent Alice Stockton-Rossini's report about this.

ROSSINI: When Rush Limbaugh discovers a hoax, he corrects it immediately. So what he spent a good part of his Friday broadcast gloating over an Internet story about how a TIME Magazine reporter got a hold of the president's college thesis, and in it he disses the Constitution? So what the story was fake? When Limbaugh realized the report was fake he didn't say sorry, not even oops. He insisted the fabricated theses is still in line with what the president thinks. How does he know? Because, says Limbaugh, he's heard Obama say it. A transcript of the Friday broadcast is still at the top of Limbaugh's Web page. The headline: "Obama's Disdain for the Constitution. We know he thinks it, don't we?" But being Rush Limbaugh means never having to say you're sorry. When Limbaugh realized the story was satire, he admitted the report was a fake, then added, "For good comedy to be comedy, it must contain an element of truth."

RUSH: I continue to be amazed, and I marvel at how easy it is to make these people look like fools. She even says she went to my website. All of this 'cause I didn't say I'm sorry. I don't know that I've gotten one apology from anybody in the media about using fabricated quotes attributed to me. They live in such a narrow world; they are so unaware of what is really going on. I continue to be marveling at the fact that they don't really know what happens in our world, folks, but we know everything about their world because we study 'em and we research 'em, and we don't read fake websites quoting what media said. We listen to them. It pains us, it's frustrating as hell, but we do it. Here's Chris Matthews last night on Hardball.

MATTHEWS: Rush didn't realize that it was a joke and broadcast the thesis story Friday as evidence that the president is, quote, anti-constitutionalist. Later in that same show Rushbo was told that the story was a hoax. Did he correct the record? Not exactly.

RUSH ARCHIVE: I shout from the mountaintops, "It was satire." But we know he thinks it. Good comedy, to be comedy, must contain an element of truth, and we know how he feels about distribution of wealth so we stand by the fabricated quote because we know Obama thinks it anyway.

MATTHEWS: You can't beat that, did you hear that? Rush stands by the hoax because he told his Dittoheads a hoax contains truth. Well, it takes a true Dittohead to register on that one.

RUSH: These people! He has no clue that I'm parodying what happened to me, that he participated in. I don't think I've gotten an apology from Matthews on this. So we stand by the fabricated quote? (laughing) I don't know, folks. It's fun. Did he correct the record? I shout from the mountaintops, element of truth, we know how he feels about distribution -- We do know how he feels about it, so we stand by the fabricated quote. (laughing) Which is exactly what happened to me. I'm out of words to describe the insular world and the utter, utter lack of a sense of humor that these people have, particularly where Obama is concerned.

Carbon footprint of the average sized dog is the same as driving a Vollkswagon Golf:

Lamar Alexander: Obama climate change legislation would deliberately kill jobs (to be fair, the White House disagrees; and who is a better expert on jobs than the White House?):

Smart meters—someone other than you is going to control what appliances you can use and when you can use them...

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 #99	Kukis Digests and Opines on this Week’s News and Views	November 1, 2009