Another ad from CraigsList

GWM 27

Well, I have to say it has been twenty eight years of ups and downs. Mostly the downs I think are good in a lot of ways. (I always try to be optimistic) You take all of the trials and learn from them in your future. It makes your charactor a lot stronger. I take pride in who I am and where I come from. I don't know what the future will bring, but I certainly know who holds the future. Tenacity is my middle name. As one by who has magnificant work ethic. Always working so hard at so many things. I like to juggle many tasks at once. My friends call me a one man band. I have many exuberant goals in life. A customer asked me once, being sarcastic, "Can you tell me the meaning of life"? A co-worker answered, "To live a happy life." Sometimes things do not work out the way they should, but if you never forget your asperations and what you want your life to be, you will always live happily. Since I have turned twenty eight I have learned many things. I believe these past two years have been the years of enlightenment for me. Ways to implement love and to learn to share more with others no matter which walk of life you come from. Self exploration and self discovery has been amazing. I keep turning the pages because I want to learn more and more. It is challenging to ALWAYS come from love within your heart instead of fear. Even if it is having a conversation with close loved one or stranger on the street. Somehow, I get lost in the past or the future instead of being present in the now. It is something I work on daily along with wanting and asking more from the universes. Mastering this will not be easy, but with practice soon enough, it will be second nature. I am 5'8" 168lbs Spanish/italian/french Average to Mildly toned build. If you have more questions about stats please ask. I am generally looking for Latino or White guys to get to know. Ages I would have to say my range is between TWENTY SEVEN and THIRTY FIVE. I am not looking for hookups or anything sexual from the beginning. If you can handle a great conversation and carry one then please respond. LTR and Friends is what I am after. More meaning and definition I get from an individual the better. I also have many more photographs to share. If you have some I would love to see them. Thank you for taking the time to read my posting.

Hey, Who Ordered ‘Gigi’?
By MICHAEL WILSON NY TIMES
THE little red envelope just sat there. Night after night. Mocking.
You would think it was filled with anthrax, the way no one wanted to touch it. But inside the envelope was a DVD, rented from Netflix by Louis Marino and his wife, Trente Miller, in Brooklyn.
“ ‘The English Patient,’ ” said Mr. Marino, 39, the creative director for an ad agency. “I never got a chance to see it in the theater. My wife was like, ‘Yeah, I’ll definitely watch that with you. Put it on the list.’ It goes on the list.”
And so began their siege in this new trench on the front lines of American marriage: the shared Netflix queue.
With a nation in recession and households cutting back on nights out at the movies, and even canceling cable services, Netflix has thrived, with a growing number of subscribers looking for cheap escapist relief. The company announced in February that it had surpassed 10 million subscribers. The slim red envelopes are everywhere these days, each packed with a single DVD, pumping like platelets through the nation’s mail system.
But for many couples, the queue — the computer list of which films will arrive next in the mail, after those at home are returned — is as important as everything else that spouses and other varieties of significant others share, from pet names to closet space to the bathroom. For some, this is fine. For others, the queue is the new toilet seat that somebody left up.
Back to that disc at the Marino residence, dug in like an old grudge.
“I had ‘English Patient’ for more than six months,” Mr. Marino confessed. “It was an insane amount of time.” He recalled starting the same discussion with his wife, night after night, as they flipped among the five DVDs from their Netflix subscription. “Do you want to watch this? Do you want to watch this? Do you want to watch ‘English Patient?’ ”
“No,” was the response he got.
Soon, Mr. Marino could not even get the full title out of his mouth before it was shot out of the sky like the English Patient himself.
“It was like, ‘Eng — —’ ”
“No.”
“It just sat. My wife thought it would be too depressing. I’m like, ‘When are you going to be in the mood to watch it?’ She’s like, ‘I don’t know.’ ”
Eventually, it was returned unwatched.
Mr. Marino and Ms. Miller are not alone. Far from it. Men and women from perfectly happy partnerships report their own dysfunctional cohabitation within the confines of the queue. Once upon a time, these sorts of disagreements were sorted out in the aisles of a video store, before a movie was selected. Now, when the conversation begins, it’s already too late.
“It comes down to who gets the queue,” said Michelle Newton, 37, a homemaker and mother in Leland, N.C.
“Let’s say there’s a couple things I want to see,” she said. In that case, she will sneak into the queue and move her movie to the top, often dashing the hopes of her husband, Grant, a reactor operator at a power plant, at the last moment.
“My husband had looked at the mail and thought a guy flick was coming in, and it’s a chick flick,” Ms. Newton said of a recent dust-up. “He’ll go back through and move stuff back up the queue. It’s who keeps up with the queue, as awful as that sounds.”
They recently cut back from a two-disc $13.99 monthly subscription to the austerity plan of one disc at a time, $8.99, putting all the more pressure on who wins the battle of the queue.
“Right now we have, ‘Man on Fire,’ ” she said. (The 2004 film stars Denzel Washington — decidedly not a chick flick.) “We’re not sure who put it there,” Ms. Newton said skeptically. “He’s saying it wasn’t him. He hasn’t watched it yet. If he doesn’t watch it in the next few days, it’s going back.”
Policing the queue is a delicate matter. Tom Smith, 35, of Park Slope in Brooklyn, ran the queue he shares with his girlfriend, Michelle Yarnick, with an iron fist, creating a two-week rule for DVDs in the apartment. After that — out. But a few too many of Ms. Yarnick’s movies went out unwatched, and he recently extended the limit to four weeks — a Netflix eternity to many, including himself, but what are you going to do?
Greg Albrecht, 28, a software engineer in San Francisco, has been on the receiving end of the premature return. “If I don’t watch it within a week, she’ll return it,” he said of his fiancée. “She’ll think I’ve already seen it or I’m not interested. You’re like: ‘Oh, we’ll watch PBS. It’s not the end of the world.’ But it’s disappointing.”
Dr. Adam Wolfberg, 38, in Newton, Mass., would be thrilled with any sort of time limit for his family’s rentals. Every month, his credit card is charged $17.84, with tax, for their three-disc subscription, and yet he doesn’t remember the last time a disc was watched.
“I don’t even know where they are,” he admitted glumly.
Dr. Wolfberg is a cash cow for Netflix, having already spent many times over what he would have paid to buy the three DVDs. The business model, wherein the busiest customers save the most money, is not unlike a gym membership, and adds a familiar stress — finances — to the couple sharing a queue. An unreturned disc is costing them money. And just as gym members sometimes slack off after an initial burst of dedication, Netflix users become more careless with the disc-to-cost ratio as the months of membership wear on.
Things move at a fairly brisk pace at the Brooklyn home of Jacob Levenson, 35, a writer, and his wife, Kazandra Bonner, 36, who designs the menus on DVDs. They have no television, and largely depend on their computer’s DVD drive for entertainment when their 2 ½-year-old son falls asleep. They share a four-disc Netflix subscription and watch most everything together, for better or for worse.
“I tend to be much more opinionated,” he said. “I don’t rent movies unless I’ve read the review, and try to triangulate some opinion of whether a movie is good and has artistic integrity.”
His wife? Not so much triangulation. “She will randomly rent anything,” he said. “It drives me insane. And yet, she will be quick to point out she’ll rent something like ‘Battlestar Galactica.’ ”
Ms. Bonner practically blushes when she remembers one surprise. “I’d heard the name ‘High School Musical’ a lot, and I knew nothing about it,” she said. She thought, “Why is it making such a big splash in the headlines?” as her finger pressed the button adding it to the queue. “That was kind of a miss for our household.”
Some couples need help from a third party, so Netflix came up with its Profiles tool, sort of like a therapist for the queue. Each partner gets his or her own profile, and an allotment of discs, so that films from each list come and go and no one party takes over.
Netflix does not know how many of its accounts are for individuals and how many are for couples. There has been at least one “Netflix divorce,” in which a couple gave up on trying to share a queue and instead created two accounts, said a spokesman, Steve Swasey. The number of accounts with separate profiles is very small — so small that last year, Netflix announced it was doing away with the tool. The news was met with outrage.
“Because of the strong response from the very few who use it, we decided it was an important enough element for them to keep it,” Mr. Swasey said.
Some people share the contents of their queues with friends, or post them on Facebook pages. Kinda Serafi, 34, in Manhattan, would be horrified to share her queue with anyone. It has her name on it, and only her name, but she is less and less responsible for its contents. Starting almost immediately after she married in 2005 and shared her Netflix password with her husband, the red envelopes began racing upstairs to their apartment with greater frequency, like salmon spawning.
And the selections darkened in tone. The films of her single days — “Spanglish,” “Out of Africa,” “Gandhi” — were replaced overnight with “Infernal Affairs,” “Hot Rods to Hell,” “High Tension” and “Maniac Cop.” It’s not enough work being happily married — now you need people looking at your queue and worrying that you’re losing your mind?
Her husband, a reporter at this newspaper who happens to be the author of this article, has said repeatedly she can pick her own movie whenever she wants. He declined to comment.

Another weird ad from CraigsList

Hi everyone, I am a discreet married bi and would like to find a semi-regular sex buddy. I saw an ad on the 25th and tried to message it but go no response. The picture below is from that ad and the guy is from San Jose West. I am hoping he is not offended by the reposting of his pic, and would entertain communication with me. I prefer to find a regular dl white guy that lives near me for occassional to regular fun. Again I hope not to offend you b reposting the pic. Otherwise I am looking for a guy for occasional to regular fun, understanding, prefer a married bi guy. Regular guy, white and smooth is also prefered. I am a smaller guy, 5'4. I don't like to craiglist because of the dirty people, so I am hoping to find a clean guy that understands the request. Look forward to hearing from you.

A Familiar Path in Months Before Fatal Shooting

Murder of Police in Oakland
By SOLOMON MOORE and JESSE McKINLEY NY Times
OAKLAND, Calif. — When Lovelle Mixon walked out of a prison last fall in the remote town of Susanville, Calif., he knew exactly where he was headed: back to Oakland, back to his family and back to his life of dreams and zero prospects.
Less than five months later, Mr. Mixon’s life would end in a violent confrontation with Oakland police officers that left five dead — Mr. Mixon and four officers — after he turned a routine traffic stop into a shootout. But between his release from prison and his death, Mr. Mixon, 26, had dropped innumerable hints that he had fallen from the straight and narrow path that his friends and family dearly wished for him and embarked on one that led to a nervous phone call from the side of the road.
“He was saying that they were talking on the radio, that they were probably calling for backup, you know how they do,” the uncle, Curtis Mixon, said of the cellphone call, just before the shootout. “Then he said he had to go.”
The police and witnesses have painted a savage picture of Mr. Mixon as a man who stood over his victims, fatally shooting two officers on a street in midday before fleeing into an apartment building, where two SWAT team members died and another officer was injured. Others have portrayed him as a man failed by an overloaded and flawed California penal system where thousands of former inmates flout the parole law and thousands of others skate by in programs where each agent regularly handles dozens of parolees.
But in the months leading up to the shooting, Mr. Mixon seemed to mix the elements of both the striving and the sinister, struggling to find legitimate employment — he took a real estate class, for example, a nonstarter in a down economy — but also buying a gun.
“I told him, ‘Man, you’re in a no-win situation. You’re a parolee. If they catch you, you’re going back to prison,’ ” said his cousin Jermaine Mixon, who said Mr. Mixon had showed him a gun that he would eventually turn on police officers on Saturday. “Lovelle said he was going to put the gun away. But I guess he was carrying it with him.”
In recent weeks, Mr. Mixon had started to carry himself with an unexpected swagger, something his cousin said he might have owed to a new profession: pimping, an occupation that paid for the 1995 Buick Park Avenue he was driving when police pulled him over.
“That’s not something he wanted to stay in,” his cousin said, “but he couldn’t find anything else to pay the bills.”
At the same time, he had also begun to chafe under the parole board rules. When released in November, Mr. Mixon seemed to take his parole seriously. Records show he reported for several drug tests and to meetings and a job placement program.
But whatever illegal activities Mr. Mixon was engaged in were easy to hide. Mr. Mixon was supervised by an agent from one of Oakland’s three parole units, which have three dozen officers and nearly 2,000 parolees. His agent, who has not been identified, handled 70 parolees.
It is a ratio that even corrections officials lament.
“If there’s any one thing I could change with a magic wand, it would be to reduce that caseload,” said Gordon Hinkle, a spokesman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
His agency has 124,000 parolees, according to the latest data, but the whereabouts of 13.5 percent of them are unknown.
Mr. Mixon’s grandmother Mary Mixon said her grandson repeatedly tried to make appointments with his parole officer, only to be stood up after hours of waiting. Relatives said the officer often belittled him in front of others, called him a criminal and threatened to revoke his parole a second time.
Mr. Hinkle said he doubted that account. “In Mr. Mixon’s case, his agent did everything by the book,” he said.
Mr. Mixon was designated a “high control” case and was supposed to meet at least twice a month with his parole officer, parole officials said.
Mr. Mixon had also shown disdain for authority before his death, going to Modesto, Calif., without informing his parole officer, in violation of his parole. Once there, he had confided to his father, John A. Mixon, that he fully expected to land back in prison.
“He told me that he was ready to go back to jail just so he could change his parole officer,” John Mixon said.
Mr. Mixon’s first stint in state prison began in 2002, for assault with a deadly weapon in a carjacking in San Francisco. He served a little less than five years with good behavior under California’s determinate sentencing program, under which almost all prisoners receive parole, calculated in advance. And while relatives said he had to fight to prove himself because of his size — he was 5 foot 7 and weighed 150 pounds — the corrections department has no record of violations.
When he was released, Mr. Mixon established a pattern that would later play out to tragic ends: a couple of months of seemingly good behavior, followed by a descent into trouble. Even if the authorities did not know it, rules were being broken: One picture of his welcome-home party in October 2007 shows a bowl full of marijuana buds.
Still, there were signs Mr. Mixon was trying to behave. He got a job with a janitorial service and made his parole appointments. But in late January 2008, he came under suspicion of a homicide in Alameda County. While Mr. Mixon was never charged in that case, a search revealed a drug scale and stolen laptop computer in his possession. It was enough to send him back to prison for nine months, this time to Susanville, 200 miles from home.
When he walked out of prison on parole in November, Mr. Mixon had spent the better part of six years behind bars. Once again, he behaved for a while, but relatives said they began to worry that he was coming apart several weeks ago. Law enforcement, too, had taken notice, after he missed three appointments, prompting an arrest warrant. According to the Oakland Police Department, Mr. Mixon had also become the main suspect in a February rape, linked by a DNA sample.
Mr. Mixon’s uncle, Curtis, said his nephew had become depressed and emotionally withdrawn and was difficult to reach by phone.
Whether it was the warrant or the possible rape charge that played in Mr. Mixon’s head when he was pulled over, no one can know. His uncle was the last person to speak to him, on the cellphone, moments before his nephew drew his gun. He was describing the traffic stop and said he would call him back as the police pulled him over.
“But he was probably thinking about that piece he had in the car,” Mr. Mixon’s uncle said, “and he wasn’t about to go back to jail.”

Claim: Jacko's Rep Threatened Harm From Nation of Islam
By Roger Friedman
(FoxNews)
It should be rockin’ at the Hard Rock Café in New York today where famed auctioneer Darren Julien is exhibiting items from the forthcoming Michael Jackson memorabilia sale.
Last week, Julien and his partner Martin Nolan entered affavadits into Los Angeles Superior Court claiming that an associate of Jackson’s suggested they were in danger from the Nation of Islam if they didn’t stop the auction scheduled for Los Angeles next month.
Jackson’s representative, James R. Weller, Julien says, met with him and Nolan on February 9, 2009 and threatened him with reciprocity from the Nation of Islam. For most of 2004, Jackson was managed by Leonard Muhammad, son in law of Louis Farrakhan. His security was provided by the NOI as well throughout his 2005 trial for child molestation.
Julien says that Weller, who is partners with Jackson’s manager Tohme R. Tohme in an enterprise called TRW Advertising, asked to meet them at a fast food restaurant on Wilshire Boulevard. There, Julien and Nolan each claim in sworn statements, Weller made a veiled threat on behalf of Jackson and Tohme.
"During the meeting, Weller told Martin and me that our lives would be in danger if we did not postpone the auction. Weller said if we refused to postpone it, we would be in danger from "Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam; those people are very protective of Michael."
Julien’s statement continues: "He told us that Dr. Tohme and Michael Jackson wanted to give the message to us that "our lives are at stake and there will be bloodshed."
The next day, Tohme insisted on meeting Julien and Nolan at a Starbucks, Julien says in the declaration. "At that meeting, Tohme dnied any knowledge of Weller’s threats, and said that he accepted the auction would need to proceed as agreed."
I wrote about this Tohme R. Tohme in this column last week. Although he refers to himself as "doctor" and lets others do so as well, he conceded to me that he is not now a licensed physician. He refused to say if he ever was one, what kind, or where he received a degree.
On the website for TRW Advertising, Tohme — who is Lebanese — asserts that he’s Ambassador at Large to the country of Senegal. Yesterday I spoke with a representative for that country at their Washington embassy who said he’d never heard of Tohme R. Tohme. "There are two ambassadors at large," said Mr. Mansour Gueye. "He isn’t one of them."
Weller, accused of making the threat, did not return messages. In contrast to Tohme, Weller is considered legit. On the TRW site he lists over twenty years of experience in the advertising world, much of it in Republican politics and verifiable. An associate says he’s known Weller for most of that time, and he’s on the up and up. Tohme is a different story.
Neverland in ‘Shambles’
Darren Julien, owner of the auction house that is about to sell of the contents of Neverland, couldn’t believe the condition of the place when he was summoned there last summer.
In his declaration filed with the Los Angeles Superior Court, Julien lays out what he saw back on July 23, 2008:
"When I arrived at Neverland," he writes, "I was surprised to see that it was in shambles. Buildings, amusement rides, industrial equipment, personal automobiles, and Jackson’s personal zoo and Tipi village were falling apart. Gardens and lawns were overgrown. Joe Marcus [Jackson’s chief of security] and Tohme informed us that Jackson had abandoned the property and has not been there since the trial in 2005."
Julien took pictures of the property, which are attached to the declaration. They show the former fantasy property gone to seed, a mere shell of its former glory.
By August 8, Julien — with signed contracts in hand — began the process of dismantling and cataloging Jackon’s belongings.
"At that time, Dr. Tohme" — Julien didn’t know Tohme was not actually a doctor — "confirmed that Jackson had already removed from Neverland whatever personal items he wanted to keep. Dr. Tohme encouraged me and my employees to take whatever property we though we could sell at auction or that would have value. Tohme urged me to take chandeliers, fireplace mantles, carpets and even the brass oven hoods in the kitchens."
Tohme, of course, was not only managing Jackson but working for Colony Capital LLC, the firm that had bought the $23.5 million note on Neverland.
In the end, Julien says, "I did return certain items to Jackson, including some items that I believed might be embarrassing to him." He doesn’t elaborate.

Another Craigslist Ad (GWM47)
Don't worry, you don't have to read all this ad, you can skip to the next ad or temporary fix. Don't get all flustered. it only shows your weakness. :~) I am posting here from Russian River area becuase I have been posting for over 6 months, and decided to look beyond my own backyard. It is not working out for me posting in Sonoma County and I figure that Russian River is a prime vacation spot for San Franciscans!
Everyone I meet in Sonoma County is either already attached (whom they tell you after they've had you), or out seeking dick after dick after dick.... or the rest are posing as str8 or bi guys who think they are fooling the world when they say they are straight but looking to take a cock in their ass only for tonight.
All this preping, sending emails back and forth, sending pics (or other men's pics), getting aroused, groomed, arranging to meet (if it even gets that far), driving or having a guy come over,or getting the webcam going, getting a quick and unsatisfying fuck session, getting cleaned up again, and the next day it's back to the same old routine.... because 9 out of 10 you will never hear back from them again! We all spend about 1/3rd our lives asleep, 1/3rd at work (at least some), and the other third playing the Gay game. Isn't it just as lonely the next morning when you wake up in an empty bed?
This may sound like I'm bitter, but NO, I'm actually very thankful that I have always been a different breed. I am someone who wants substance, a boyfriend, a husband or soulmate. WOW, perhaps I am the only one left in Somona looking for this higher quality of life!
YES, I know I'm going to get shit mail from tired, angry and bitter guys who have nothing going on in their lives but write hate mails online all day long,, but that's the chance I take to get the right person in my life. It's called process of elimination :~) There's enough "suck my cock" ads for those guys, and you don't have to waste your life away in jealousy because someone out there thinks outside the box for a change and who has more courage than you to post a "real Ad" for a change.
For those who are all hung-up on the numbers game, I'm 47 but if I color my hair, I look younger than most 28 year olds! I am very blessed with the youthful gene, and am still the same weight as I was in junior high! I take care of myself, watch what I eat, don't hang at bars guzzling bears all night trying to wash away my sorrows, and actually have a life with goals and dreams that may include another person of like mind and character.
Of personal info, I am Five-Seven, 130#, and 29w. I am attracted to those who also take care of themselves and are height/weight proportionate. My ultimate attraction are guys that are skinny or slender. Hard to find you might say, and this I would agree, especially in your 40's. Respect for yourself shows in your appearance!
So, apart from someone slim/slender/skinny, age is no issue. I don't care if you're 20 or your 60, as long as you look good for your age and are happy with yourself!
Also, if you would like to continue a conversation on possibly meeting, then you would have to have a life as well. No living with Mommy, or car-less, job-less, home-less, etc. Sorry, but I have direction and would like to include someone in my life that has proven themselves, even if it is in their own little circle.
Would like to find someone who is comfortable with being themselves. Although I'm masculine, I am not afraid or terrified of being called Gay or Homo but haters. It doesn't bother me in the least! If you have issues with that, then there are a telephone book of counselers that can help you overcome your fears and make you a "real man".
If you made it this far, and would like to see where you can advance in your life, then write me... but be sure to include a photo. I don't even respond to those without photos due to all the fake nonsense on Craigs (which you are very well aware of, so I don't have to explain myself).
Take care men, and hope to meet someone who has substance and perhaps a future with another man in their life.

Why do Millons read CraigsList Personals?
This is amazing!

Ya know, I read these almost every other day. And I see a lot of the same stuff. I would never define myself as masculine, I would never define myself as professional, I would never define myself as hung, I would never define myself as built, I would never say I'm into walks along the beach and the blah blah blah, NOT any of this stuff. I'm not any of those. But for the right person... I'm the best person you've ever not met yet... I'm a very stably-unstable 34yo queer guy, viciously intelligent, incredibly fun and happy, but dark at times, dancing that delicate line betwixt knowing more than I should and realizing that I still have to live here and learn more than I care to know. Someone who can, in a single bus ride, see the darkest and brightest of humanity in it's various passengers. Someone who see's through life's silly illusions, but falls prey to a lot of them all the time. Someone who's empathy both makes him incredibly sad, but also let's him see the brightest side of humanity's future. Hmmm... You too? Then, read on! What do I want? Doesn't seem that much of a tall order, but the more I travel through life I'm starting to realize it might be rare indeed... You don't abide by life and society's rules, but squeak by when you need to on your charm and wits. You *GET* the following things: This is all we get, there's no hereafter, we're just really evolved apes with opposable thumbs, that can be stuck in places. Humanity is on a crash-course towards oblivion and we'll be lucky if we take less than half of the other species on the planet with us on our way out, but still believe that there might be some hope for us to co-exist peacefully. Monogamy is a construct, passed down to us by our more puritanical heirs, and our insecurity is the thing that makes us desire this commitment so much, all the while realizing it would be nice to have someone in your "pack" that you could absolutely count on when the chips are down. You have a moral code of things that you will and will not allow yourself to do, and when you cross or get close to that line, you actually stop to think about what you've done and the reasons that drove you to it. You haven't recently defined yourself by terms like "butch" or "masculine" or "professional" just cuz you see these 'tags' as what they are. You get mad about social justice issues but pick your battles because there's a better fight coming down the road... You're smart, but somewhat undereducated, because you know we'll never know everything we're supposed to. You make your own jokes and find them really, really funny, because damnit, if you can't then who the hell will? Preferably, you've found a way to exist within capitalism by at least earning your paper with numbers printed on them by being of service of others, but trust me, even if you work for the "man", just knowing that they are only paper with numbers printed on them is more than I could have ever hoped for. Sexually you think of yourself as flexible, and not stuck in a top/bottom dichotomy, but rather relish the ways we can both talk to each other and give each other the greatest pleasure imaginable by this old fashioned thing called communicating. Most importantly, you haven't been "waiting" for an ad like this, but are somewhat relieved that you're not quite as alone as you thought you were... ya know? And here's my 47 disclaimers. Well, not actually 47,,, My path through life has left me exactly where I am. With me eschewing money, we're not going to Tahiti anytime soon, I work a couple of jobs, and that leaves me sometimes a bit broke, but always generous. Being frustrated with my own state in life, and that of humanity, I tend to drink and smoke a bit more than I should, but nothing I can't handle fluidically. My clothes or job description will never impress anyone, but luckily that won't really matter to you. I live life with little armor on, and as such, get hurt fairly easily and often. But I always bounce back. You too? What you are down for? Well... anything fun really, cuz' we only get "this" day once. Maybe a bike ride somewhere fun, basking in the sun listening to nature, being among fellow humans at some fundraiser/beer bust/random coagulation of humans, followed by a nice night of snuggling watching something comedic or sci-fi-ic with maybe a bit of making out/mind blowing sex thrown in for good measure. Followed by waking up realizing that a bit more trust has been established and feeling a tiny bit safer in calling the next day to say "when do you want to hang out again?" I have no illusions that you're going to be exactly what I want. Nor do you for me. But real, true communication and compromise are the things that lead to realizing that someone in your life might just be around for a bit longer than next week. You either get this or you don't. Ya know? Just to cover the base-ish way us humans can be, I'm short (5'6), pretty easy on the eyes, white mutt, brown hair (I'm done coloring it... for now), with weird eyes that change color depending on what shirt I wear (or don't). I will never be a greek god-type archetype, but I maintain pretty well, ranging betwixt the 135/145 lb. limits, depending on how much cycling/gym going I've done in the previous week. (well, and based on how much pizza and/or beer I've had!). And I don't have a particular "type", 'cept to say that I'd sleep with me, so I hope you feel the same about yourself. I've found that when you like a person's soul, they're about 5000% more attractive than average. That being said, I'd still like to find someone in my general age range (I do have hormones after all) but will jump that self-induced wall for right person. Well, now, I've written a novel in craigslist terms. Please don't hit me back with a "wanna fuck" or a cock shot. I've been waiting for a bit too long for that. But, if the things I've script here ring any kind of bell for you, please do say "hello". I promise I won't bite unless asked really nicely to. Peace, love.

The Last Shopping Mall? New Jersey Awaits Xanadu
By Sean Gregory / East Rutherford, N.J. (Time)
It rises out of the tidal murk of the Meadowlands — the polluted northern–New Jersey wetlands on which the sports complex of the same name was built some 33 years ago — like a garish species from a monster movie. What is that swamp thing? It's a mishmash of big-box structures covered in aqua, blue and white tiles, with a little mustard yellow and brown thrown in to finish off the 1970s-nightmare look. Part of the complex, still under construction, is shaped like a ski jump, because what says industrial metropolitan America quite like a Nordic sport?
"Looks like bathroom tile from the 1970s," one astute commenter wrote on nj.com, a website that covers New Jersey news. "I expect to see David Cassidy every time I drive by that thing because it looks like the Partridge Family bus!" wrote another. Are the construction workers wearing bell-bottoms? The commenter continued, "My ex-husband flew in from Florida and said, 'That mall can be seen from space.' " (See pictures of the Mall of America.)
Yes, that thing is a mall called Xanadu, located in East Rutherford. The name is a nod to the heavenly summer home immortalized by English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge: "In Xanadu did Kubla Khan/ A stately pleasure-dome decree." It's also the name of a ridiculous 1980 Olivia Newton-John movie involving roller-skating muses and disco. Slated to open in August, Xanadu, a wannabe shopping paradise, will be a 2.4 million-sq.-ft. retail and entertainment complex located 3½ miles from the Empire State Building, across the Hudson River at the intersection of the New Jersey Turnpike and two heavily trafficked state roads through which 88 million vehicles pass each year.
Across the state, the project has taken a rightful beating for its exterior. The Meadowlands location isn't scenic — it's surrounded by weedy wetlands, decrepit factories, shipping containers and railroads — and Xanadu's developers spent $2 billion on what seems like the most hideous spot on the lot. "It's basically a lot of junk," says former New Jersey Governor Brendan Byrne, for whom the basketball area at the Meadowlands was once named (it's now the Izod Center). "I drive by with friends and we're embarrassed." (See pictures of the world's longest yard sale.)
You've got to give the developers some credit for their tenaciousness. But this massive project, the most expensive shopping mall ever built in the U.S., has a more serious problem than its tacky exterior: the doors will open smack in the middle of the worst recession since the Great Depression. Malls are suffering a slow, painful death. The International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC) has predicted that 73,000 stores will close their doors during the first half of 2009. Retail expert Burt Flickinger III, managing director of Strategic Resources Group, projects that 2,000 to 3,000 shopping malls and centers nationwide could go under this year. If Xanadu — which allegedly has leased 73% of its space thus far — does open in 2009, it would be the only enclosed mall to debut this year, according to the ICSC. Xanadu is the lone ranger, running straight into every possible horrible economic headwind. "It's the poster child for bad timing," says Howard Davidowitz, chairman of Davidowitz & Associates, a national retail-investment-banking and consulting firm.
What's worse, according to Xanadu's detractors, is that the mall will offer discretionary amenities at a time when consumers are in survival mode. For example, that ski jump structure will actually house a 165,000 sq. ft. indoor skiing and snowboarding facility. The mall will also include restaurants like the Cheesecake Factory, whose 2008 profits dropped nearly 30% amid the casual-dining meltdown; an 18-screen movie theater; fashion retailers such as H&M, Guess and Zara; and Cabela's, an upmarket fishing, hunting, outdoor apparel and equipment outlet. Adrenalia, an extreme-sports store, is slated to have an indoor wave pool, and the mall includes a skydiving simulator. Xanadu will also offer rides on a 286-ft. Ferris wheel that is sponsored by Pepsi. The wheel will provide stunning views of the Manhattan skyline — as well as the north Jersey highways, toll booths, weeds, containers, smokestacks and steel bridges you see in the opening credits of The Sopranos. (See pictures from Black Friday.)
"Xanadu is the epic discretionary story," says Davidowitz. "It's the epicenter of 'not needed.' How can you have this when the consumer is completely decimated? It's already one of the world's biggest nightmares."
Naturally, executives for Xanadu, which has been beset by prior delays and cost overruns, offer a different spin. "It's not like people aren't looking to recreate," says Larry Siegel, president of Xanadu. "They are. But people may not be able to rent that house on the beach or pay a few hundred bucks for a three-day pass at Disney. But they can come here and spend $100. If people spend the time here, they're going to spend the money." (See what businesses are doing well despite the recession.)
Although Xanadu doesn't have a pretty face, it's what's inside that counts for a mall. And if Xanadu can corral enough retailers to sign on for a grand opening, it has the potential to at least survive the downturn. If all goes according to plan, the mall could spice up the shopping experience, which would be a welcome change in this depressed retail environment. For example, a huge video screen in the sports area will broadcast games, which could draw shopping-averse men to the mall. The Children's Science Center, Legoland Discovery Center and Wannado City — where kids can hold "jobs" as firefighters, cops and other professionals — may give families incentive to leave the house, head for the mall and maybe buy a shirt or two while they're there.
Another advantage: the huge, diverse New York City metro area hasn't been hit quite as hard by the recession as the rest of the country has. Housing prices are dipping, but not collapsing like in other places. New York malls have held up relatively well. Xanadu's location, amid the confluence of some of the country's most congested road arteries, should also help. Surely a few curious drivers will want to check out the mega-mall. Plus, the state has built a rail line to the site; it's now just a 23-min. ride to Xanadu from Manhattan. Traditionally, city residents without cars cringe at the thought of crossing the Hudson to the Meadowlands, since public transportation to the site has been so abysmal. (See 10 things to do in New York City.)
Xanadu's president insists the mall is the real deal. "For people driving by who don't like how the front of it looks, please, give yourself a chance to understand the whole package," Siegel says. That would be a reasonable request from any mall developer. Unfortunately, it was reasonable back in 2006. Forget about paradise, Xanadu. Just try to stay out of hell.

From The Sunday Times
Stanley Johnson: Crikey, I’m a spy
In a hilarious memoir, Stanley Johnson, the father of Boris, reveals his early career as a bumbling trainee spook
There are some moments in your life that you remember with total clarity. Falling over during the Gay Gordons at the Morebath Manor pony club dance, for example. Another such moment was being shown into an elegant room in Carlton House Terrace, St James’s, to be interviewed by a tall man in a pinstriped suit. I could see his bowler hat and umbrella in a stand by the door. I also remember his name: Sir Ian Murray, Bt.
“You realise,” Sir Ian said, as I sat down, “that we will offer you the most intensive training in clandestine techniques known to man.”
I am not on the whole a man who says “no”. In this particular case I found the formula irresistible: the most intensive training in clandestine techniques known to man. As a recruiting line in 1964, in the middle of the cold war, it was up there with “Your country needs you”.
This invitation to become a spy was, as you might expect, the result of a mysterious conversation. In 1963, during my final weeks at Oxford, I had attended a dinner in a candlelit college hall and found myself sitting next to one of the directors of Guest, Keen and Nettle-folds, now known as GKN. When I told him I was heading for America on a fellowship, he paused and tapped the side of his nose meaning-fully: “Just give me a call when you get back. With your background, I’m sure they would be interested.”
I wasn’t sure exactly who “they” were and it didn’t seem to be the moment to inquire. However, almost a year and a half later I was back in Oxford with Charlotte, my wife, and Alexander Boris, our newborn son. Aged 24, with a wife and child to keep, I realised that the time had come for me to get a job.
I telephoned GKN. The nose-tapper wasn’t there but I left a message. A few days later he rang me back suggesting it might be a good idea if I “popped round” to a certain house in Carlton House Terrace for a chat with Sir Ian Murray.
“You may have to do things in the course of duty,” Sir Ian told me when we met, “that you wouldn’t normally do. You may, for example, have to break the law, for the greater good, of course. How would you feel about that?”
I said I felt fine about that, as long as a greater good was indeed involved. I had to go to Gieves in Savile Row to have a suit made with room for a shoulder holster. There was a bad Continued on page 2 Continued from page 1 moment when the old boy hovering with the measuring tape asked me which side I would be carrying my gun.
I hesitated, but he asked patiently (he had seen it all before): “Are you right-handed or left-handed, sir? If you’re right-handed, you’ll want to wear the gun on the left.”
“Of course,” I said. WHEN I got back to Oxford, Charlotte asked me where I had been.
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that,” I replied.
“Who did you see?” “I can’t tell you that either.” Nor could I tell her where I was going. At the crack of dawn every Monday for the next nine months I got into our old Ford Prefect and tootled off into the unknown.
“Hope your tutorial goes well,” I would shout as I pulled out into the Banbury Road. (Charlotte was studying English.)
“Yours too,” she would call back, “wherever and whatever it is.”
New recruits to an officially nonexistent organisation, we not only couldn’t tell our spouses where we had been or where we were going. We couldn’t even ring them up or receive calls.
There were 10 new boys (no girls) in my group. They sat us down in a classroom (I can’t say where) on our first day for our first training session. I hadn’t, up till then, given a great deal of thought to the subject of blackmail. That was to change.
The lecturer on that occasion was a gentleman of soldierly bearing who, we learnt, was generally known as “the colonel”. He fixed us with a steely eye.
The very first words he uttered that morning – indeed, the very first words I heard on this, the first morning of my new life – were: “Never try to blackmail an Egyptian. It’s totally pointless. If you’ve got some photographs of him in a compromising situation, he’ll be delighted. He’ll probably ask you for some copies so that he can send them to his friends.”
We were all issued with notebooks to record any pearls of wisdom, so that morning I wrote on the first blank page: “Never try to blackmail an Egyptian.”
When I returned to Oxford at the end of the first week, Charlotte said: “I know I can’t ask where you’ve been or where you’re going. But can I ask you what you’ve been doing?”
We’d already been taught how to answer that one: “Oh, you know, bits and pieces, odds and ends, one thing or another.”
“Sounds fascinating.” Actually, Charlotte was right. It was fascinating. “The most intensive training in clandestine techniques known to man” lived up to its billing. Most of these techniques remain, even today, so secret that I would risk running foul of the Official Secrets Act were I to reveal them.
However, there was one tried and trusted method of gathering information that we learnt which I do feel able to talk about without being sent to the Tower.
The official topic that morning was “information gathering”. The lecturer was a sandy-haired gentleman, about 50 years old, with a distinctly Slavic accent.
“You don’t always need to be ultra-sophisticated ven you’re gathering intelligence,” he told us. “Of course, the keyhole or directional microphone may be useful. Or the telephone tap. Or digging a tunnel under enemy headquarters . . . But sometimes simpler methods may be effective.
“Imagine you have a reason to be in someone’s office. You take a copy of The Times vith you. You sit opposite your target and you have conversation. Meantime, you’ve put The Times down casually on the chap’s desk. When it’s time to leave, you stand up, pick up your newspaper, making sure you’ve gathered up any top-secret memos which may be on the desktop at the same time. Get it? Any questions?”
We moved to a military establishment on the south coast, where we learnt how to attach high explosives to railway lines to derail trains.
“Ideally,” our instructor said as we gathered under a disused viaduct, “you’ll blow the line just as the train comes over. Lay the explosives on one side of the track, not both. You want the train to topple over and all the carriages to come crashing down. If you blow both sides of the track, the train may just settle down on its haunches, as it were, without toppling over.”
Nowadays we call that “terrorism”, at least when the other side is doing it. That’s not how it seemed to us then. Blowing up trains seemed to be not only morally right but good clean fun as well. IT was at this military establishment on the south coast that I met Patrick Fairweather for the first time. Patrick had joined the Foreign Office at more or less the same time I joined the officially nonexistent organisation, which I believe I may still not be allowed to name.
Patrick, who had been designated by the Foreign Office as a kind of liaison officer to our training group, participated in one of our more complicated training exercises.
The exercise was to be held in the north of England. The colonel had given us a final briefing. “Remember, you’ll be under cover. Deep cover. If you meet someone you know, for Christ’s sake don’t give any sign that you recognise him.”
I bought a long plastic mackintosh before boarding the train since I knew it would probably be raining wherever we were going. I walked through the train, wearing the mac and trying to look inconspicuous. As I did so, I spotted two or three fellow trainees. We studiously ignored each other.
Patrick had entered into the spirit of the exercise by disguising himself as a merchant banker. He was sitting in a first-class compartment, puffing on a cigar. There were a couple of other people in the compartment with him.
I slid the door open. “I’m terri-bly sorry to interrupt, but can anyone tell me if this train is going to Darlington?”
Patrick told me later that it was all he could do to keep a straight face.
We all had different assignments that day. Mine was to blow up the power station in Blyth, on the Northumberland coast.
The “blowing-up” part of the mission went fine. I found my way into the power station at dead of night, climbed up the metal service ladder and rammed the plastic explosive (pretend, not real, of course) into the spot where the rotating shaft exits from the turbine.
“Shove it up the elephant’s backside as far as you can,” the instructor had told us.
Back in town I bought a souvenir-from-Blyth teaspoon to crush the secret ink crystals, found envelope and paper and wrote my report. I then wrote a cover letter at right angles to the secret ink letter.
“Dear Mummy and Daddy, I don’t think my marks are very good this week, but at least I am having a good time. You will be pleased to hear we beat Marlborough 18–6.” After I had posted the letter, I read the second part of my mission orders: “After blowing up Blyth power station, head for Hexham across moor.”
To avoid carrying any incriminating evidence, I swallowed my orders and filled a salt cellar in a cafe with the remaining secret ink crystals. I was, however, reluctant to jettison the souvenir spoon because I thought I would give it to Charlotte. A modest gift, admittedly. Still, I said to myself, it’s the thought that counts.
I was about five miles from Hexham, marching along the highway, when I came across a red Austin-Healey sports car on the shoulder of the road. A young woman with blonde hair and a short skirt had the bonnet open.
“Can’t seem to get it started,” she said. I turned the key in the ignition and the engine gave a healthy roar.
“Oh! It seems to have started now!” she exclaimed. “Thank you so much. Can I give you a lift somewhere?”
There was nothing in my mission orders which said I had to actually walk to Hexham. So I said: “That’s great. My name’s Stanley. No, it isn’t actually, it’s Bunwell. Jeremy Bunwell . . . I mean Buncroft . . .”
We were only a mile or so from Hexham when we ran into a roadblock. Blue lights flashed everywhere.
I won’t pretend the next 10 hours were pleasant. My guess is the police had simply been told to pick me up and give me a hard time. I have no doubt that the young lady in the Austin-Healey had also had her instructions, though how much she knew wasn’t clear. At least the police sprang their trap on the open road. They didn’t wait for the Austin-Healey woman to inveigle me into her hotel room somewhere.
What really let me down was the Blyth souvenir teaspoon. During the first two or three hours of interrogation in the Hexham police station, I thought I stuck to my cover story quite well. I made it clear that I had a good reason for being in Blyth and a good reason for heading to Hexham. But the man who was interviewing me kept harping on about the teaspoon. Why on earth would I be carrying such an item unless for a nefarious purpose?
“Might you have needed it for crushing crystals to make secret ink?”
If they hadn’t taken my trousers away, I might have toughed it out. But, frankly, when you’ve been hours in a police cell in the north of England in just underpants, shirt and socks and it’s perfectly clear that the interrogators are quite soon going to move up to the next level, you look for a way out. It might not be Abu Ghraib but it was certainly alarming.
In his briefing the colonel had told us: “One last thing, chaps. I’m going to give you all an emergency number. But let me make one thing absolutely plain. It is an emergency number. I don’t expect you to use it except in an emergency.”
After one of the breaks, my interrogator came back with a scrap of paper.
“Found this in the pocket of your trousers. Does it mean anything to you?”
“Why don’t you just ring it,” I said wearily. I’d had enough by then.
A few days later I gave Charlotte the teaspoon. “Oh, Blyth. How interesting,” she said. “Have you been there? Or am I not allowed to ask?”
“Yes, I mean no. Well, sort of.” The Blyth business worried me. Was I cut out for the career I had chosen?
One Sunday Charlotte and I went to tea at Patrick and Maria Fairweather’s house in Richmond, Surrey.
“One of the things I find difficult,” I told Patrick as we walked in the garden, “is this question of cover. People ask me what I’m doing. We’re meant to mumble, turn the question, be evasive or whatever. But I don’t think it’s very convincing, do you?”
“Why don’t you say you work in the Foreign Office?”
“Fine, but what if they ask what my job is there?”
“I’ll get back to you on that.” A few days later I received a three-word message from him. Happily, I didn’t need a one-time pad to decipher it. It said simply: “Sudan desk officer.”
Before we graduated from the course, we were taken on a familiarisation visit to the Foreign Office. I didn’t see Patrick but I did see Hugh Stephenson, known as “Tiggy” to more intimate friends, who had been at Oxford a couple of years before me.
I bumped into him as I was walking down one of the Foreign Office’s long marble corridors.
“Good heavens, Stanley, what are you doing here?” Hugh asked.
I remembered Patrick’s advice. “I’ve joined the Foreign Office, actually, Hugh.”
“That’s good news. What are you doing?” “I’m the Sudan desk officer.” He looked puzzled and a little irritated: “No, you’re not. I am.” BEFORE undergoing the most intensive training in clandestine techniques known to man, I’d started a kind of “internship” at the Oxford University Research Institute for Agricultural Economics. It was a dogsbody job checking proofs of the institute’s quarterly bulletin, for which I was paid a small allowance. I also signed up as a graduate student with a view to sitting the examination for the diploma in agricultural economics (Dip Ag Econ).
For six months I had done absolutely no studying. I hadn’t even been in Oxford. I had been gadding around the country learning how to be totally inconspicuous and acquiring the rudiments of “tradecraft”, as John le Carré would have called it.
In the circumstances I hadn’t expected to take the diploma at all. However, one Saturday morning early in June 1965, a letter from the examiners arrived informing me that since I had “pernoctated satisfactorily” I was entitled to sit the exam. Which is what I did.
I had to miss three days of my secret training but it turned out to be worth it. Apart from the statistics paper, which was horribly hard for someone who had barely achieved a pass in O-level mathematics, I did well enough to qualify for the diploma.
“If it hadn’t been for the statistics you might have got a distinction,” Peggy Haswell, senior tutor at the institute, told me. “You did particularly well in the development economics paper. I’m not sure what you’re doing at the moment, but why don’t you apply to the World Bank?”
She gave me a brochure. That night Charlotte and I pored over it. The World Bank, it seemed, was recruiting so-called Young Professionals from all over the world, bringing them to Washington and training them on the job (“the most intensive training in development economics known to man”?) before integrating them into the bank’s operating departments.
“So what does the World Bank actually do?” Charlotte asked.
I read from the brochure: “Based in Washington DC, the bank is the largest and oldest organisation providing development finance. It began operations in 1946 and so far has made almost 500 loans amounting to $10,000m in about 80 countries.”
“What are the loans for?” “Basically, I suppose, to make life better for people. That’s the theory, anyway.”
Charlotte studied the brochure. “It says a postgraduate degree achieved with distinction in a substantial discipline is highly desirable. Do you think your diploma in agricultural economics will qualify?”
“Let’s see.” It was a long shot but I sent off for the application forms anyway.
I was invited to an interview at the World Bank’s office in Paris. It must have gone well because I later received a telegram: “Committee decision favourable; letter follows offering appointment . . .”
Can I begin to explain how momentously important that telegram was to me?
Deep down I’m a horribly serious person. I may not be a leftwinger. I’ve certainly never voted Labour in my life and can’t imagine doing so now. I doubt if I was any more radical 40 years ago than I am today. But the idea of working for an organisation like the World Bank really gripped me.
With billions of dollars at its disposal, this was an institution that could change the face of the planet. I had been lucky enough to see by then a good deal of the Third World. I had followed Marco Polo’s route through Asia by motorbike with friends and I’d hitch-hiked across South America. I reckoned I knew something about the poverty in which so many people lived. Here was a heavensent opportunity to set out on a new course.
But what would I tell the people who ran the officially nonexistent organisation that I may still not be allowed to name? They had put a lot of time, money and effort into training me to be a spy. In trepidation I drove from London to Ascot, where “Sandy” lived. I wanted to tell him that I was about to resign from an organisation to which he had given much of his working life before I had given it a proper try. I wasn’t sure how he was going to take it.
In the event, Sandy was superb. He was more than superb. He made me feel right about it when I wasn’t really feeling right about it at all. “Stanley,” he said in his unmistakable accent, “if I vas in your shoes, I vould do the same thing.”
There are certain times in your life when you feel you have been granted a last-minute reprieve. This was one of them. I don’t know if I would have been any good as a spy – probably not, I thought, and my incompetence might have cost people their lives – but now I didn’t even have to find out.
Sometimes I wonder what happened to Sir Ian Murray. One day, a year or two later, I saw a small advertisement in The Times: “Would the gentleman who inadvertently removed my umbrella from the Reform Club last Saturday kindly return it? Sir Ian Murray, Bt.”
I wondered whether Sir Ian Murray, Bt was his real name. As for the advertisement about the umbrella, it could have been a coded message. Or again, it could have been genuine. These were murky waters.
© Stanley Johnson 2009
Extracted from Stanley I Presume, by Stanley Johnson,

Still Weird
by Pat O'Brien
Michael Jackson announced he will give 10 concerts in London this summer. Pat O’Brien on the Wacko Jacko he once knew—and his chances for a comeback.
On a day when the stock market tumbled (again) and unemployment went up (again), there was some good news: Michael Jackson got a job! The former King of Pop held a long-awaited news conference in London to announce that he has found employment in this impossible economy and that he will perform ten final concerts in London, at the new O2 Arena.
Now if this comes as a surprise to you that Michael Jackson is heading back onstage, imagine what a surprise it is to those who read the last tabloid stories that Jackson was half-blind, needed a lung transplant, and was afflicted with Alpha 1-antitrypsin deficiency, which apparently is as bad as it sounds.
Michael went on stage and said something really meaningful like, “I love you so much,” and then went into the balcony to watch a series of Michael Jackson impersonators do their impersonations for him.
But no, there he was this morning, uniformed in embroidered black and silver, and wearing the darkest sunglasses this side of Jack Nicholson. After keeping screaming fans waiting for 90 minutes (there were traffic problems), Jackson came out and approached a podium loaded with a teleprompter and a microphone. It was bad enough that he couldn’t seem to get used to a mic right away, but I had to wonder what was the teleprompter for? Because all he said basically was, “This is it.” And his mantra, “You have to know I love you so much.” Honestly, this had to be that teleprompter operator’s easiest gig ever. With another “this is it and see you in July,” Michael then disappeared behind the curtain, only to be seen again, apparently, in July.
The news conference and the surrounding excitement about a comeback, which most people speculate is intended to help pay off his massive debt—hey, give him credit, at least he went back to work and didn’t ask for a bailout—was typical Jackson mayhem, but I have to admit he seemed more animated when he left his child-molestation trial and got up on an SUV and danced.
Back in my Access Hollywood days, I was the only TV guy invited to Michael’s 40th birthday party, with the intention of getting the reclusive pop star to finally say something to his fans. As he arrived, his bodyguards—I counted eight—shoved everybody in sight out of the way and he ran up a set of stairs. I ran after him (thinking, “What would Geraldo do?”) and when I got to the staging area he was behind a curtain waiting to greet the others who were invited. It took roughly 40 minutes for Michael and a few handlers to actually decide which curtain to enter from. Finally after what seemed a lifetime, Michael went on stage and said something really meaningful like, “I love you so much,” and then went into the balcony to watch a series of Michael Jackson impersonators do their impersonations for him. With that, the party was over. The next time I almost saw him was after the molestation trial when I was kicked out of Neverland after being invited in. I did get to see the merry-go-round, but I wasn’t allowed to stop and ride the ponies.
As far as comebacks are concerned, I’m generally in favor of them. After all, I went to the Cream comeback tour. I saw one of Dylan’s comebacks. And I’ve attended three Who farewell concerts. (I even, briefly, participated in my own comeback.)
But most musical comebacks have involved people who were, honestly, not ready to die with the music still in them. And the only way I can see this being a critical success—oh sure, they’ll sell the tickets—is if he can come back as the King of Pop. Nobody can dance better, nobody can energize a crowd more, and not many can do ballads and pop songs with the same level of high emotion.
So as Michael re-enters the spotlight at 50 for what could be the last time, I wish for two things for him: that he comes out looking and acting like the Michael Jackson we once knew (did anybody see Elvis in his final concerts? Yikes.) And, since this was the topic on Capitol Hill today, I hope he has health insurance.
I once asked George Harrison why he and those other three guys never made what would have been the greatest comeback of them all. His short answer was “that was then.” His long answer was that “people always think they will feel better if the Beatles get back together and that just isn’t the case. You know,” he said, “if you are in a bad mood and go to the Himalayas to feel better, all you are doing is bringing your bad mood to the Himalayas. You might as well stay in Burbank.” The quiet one was right. What we really want is to hear Michael dance and sing the entire Thriller album and know we got our money’s worth.
On that note, Michael, reading the prompter again today, said “I will sing all the songs my fans want to hear.” Let’s hope they don’t applaud the most for “Beat It.”
Pat O'Brien has been a broadcaster for more than three decades, including many years as the co-host of Access Hollywood and The Insider. A former anchor for CBS Sports, he is also the author of Talkin' Sports: A B.S.-er's Guide. He divides his time among Los Angeles, New York, and Nantucket.

The Dittohead Party: Why the GOP is Screwing Itself

Bob Cesca (Huffington Post)

The "leader of the Republican Party" question has been thoroughly analyzed and debated. And after many days and many cable news roundelays, I think we can all agree that, yes, the GOP has been inextricably grasped within the meaty, sweaty mitts of that familiar planetoid of addiction, racism and self-indulgence known as Rush Limbaugh.
And that's just fine and dandy.
But contrary to what Drudge and Politico are reporting today, this isn't some sort of wicked conspiracy cooked up by Rahm Emanuel and Robert Gibbs from within the same underground war room where they keep the president's madrassa diploma and his secret Kenyan birth certificate.
This Limbaugh situation is entirely the fault of the Republican Party. The White House is merely exploiting it -- and rightly so.
Throughout the last several decades, the Republican Party has been careening willingly towards this destiny. Year after year, the Republicans have been magnetically drawn ever closer to the simplistic worldview espoused by far-right talk radio: a segment of American society that's perhaps a little too comfy with laughing at a racial or sexist joke, or repeating nearsighted bumper sticker slogans like, "Your mortgage is not my problem."
The Republican Party has become the purview of The Dittohead: the thoughtless undead automaton who lazily yet proudly announces on the radio that he or she doesn't simply "ditto" but, in fact, "mega-dittos" everything spoken by Rush Limbaugh. "Mega" as in millions of times over.
Michael Steele has proved himself to be a Dittohead. Mike Pence and Rick Santorum and Tom DeLay? All dittoheads. You'd be hard pressed to find a Republican politician who hasn't in some way expressed his or her Dittohead status while also genuflecting at the bloated cankles of their radio warlord.
So it should come as no surprise that the leader of the dittoheads has become the leader of the Republicans.
The Republicans have positioned themselves in such a way that publicly renouncing their Dittohead status will provoke the furious anger of their leader who has so often retaliated against disloyal subjects with a Mr. Creosote caliber geyser of acidic hell, effectively emasculating any attempt at escape. Limbaugh has indeed broken the Republicans and I'm pretty sure they know it. Yet they're powerless to do anything about it.
We can only assume that they understand the hazards involved with being absorbed into Limbaugh's universe -- and they especially have to know that the Democrats know. And that leads to the big question: Why is it supremely awesome that the Republicans have become the Dittohead Party?
So far, the establishment press and cable news hasn't fully examined this all-important "why" factor. Sure, there's been plenty of talk about Limbaugh's famous "wanting President Obama to fail" remarks and how wishing for failure makes the Republicans seem like they're okay with the American economy failing, just as long as they can start winning elections again.
That's pretty bad. But the problems inherent in becoming trapped inside the Limbaugh tractor beam go much deeper and, as Chairman Steele's gut instinct spilled out, uglier.
It's easy to temporarily forget Limbaugh's record of awfulness because the latest controversy tends to obliterate memories of past controversies -- controversies to which the Republicans have, by proxy, tethered themselves. If Limbaugh is the leader of the Republicans and the Republicans are, indeed, willing to embrace Limbaugh as such a leader, then the Republicans are embracing the whole nasty package.
To fall under the rule of Limbaugh means that the Republicans have sealed their status as the party of race-baiting. In Limbaugh's world, Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama simply because Obama is black -- excuse me, Halfrican American. In Limbaugh's world, all blacks say "axe" instead of "ask." In Limbaugh's world, it's hilarious to pronounce Mayor Ray Nagin's name as Mayor Nay-ger. In Limbaugh's world, black contestants on Survivor are at a disadvantage because "blacks can't swim."
To fall under the rule of Limbaugh means that the Republicans have become the party of sexism. In Limbaugh's world, women who seek equal rights are making up for the fact that they're "ugly." In Limbaugh's world, it's hilarious to compare pubescent teenage girls to "the family dog." In Limbaugh's world, women live longer because their lives are somehow "easier." I can't imagine that would apply to Limbaugh's three ex-wives, but okay.
To fall under the rule of Limbaugh means that the Republicans have become the party of comparing torture to fraternity pranks. They've become the party of multiple divorces. The party of Oxycontin addiction. The party of "phony soldiers." The party of mysterious all-male excursions to foreign nations while in possession of erectile dysfunction medication prescribed under a false name. They've become the party of wild conspiracy theories like the one Limbaugh was repeating in October -- maybe you've heard this one. Did you know that Barack Obama traveled to Hawaii, not to visit his then-gravely ill grandmother, but instead to participate in the cover-up of his secret birth certificate?
To fall under the rule of Limbaugh means that the Republicans have become the party of this:
The Republicans are bowing to the leadership of a man who physically mocked the involuntary tremors of a Parkinson's disease victim. I can't underscore this enough. Rush Limbaugh, the leader of the Republican Party, actually imitated and exaggerated Michael J. Fox's Parkison's tremors.
Governor Jindal: "I think Rush is a great leader for conservatives."
Chairman Michael Steele: "I have enormous respect for Rush Limbaugh."
Congressman Mike Pence: "I think Rush Limbaugh -- who I admire, and like millions of Americans, I cherish his voice in the public debate."
And so the Republicans expect to be taken seriously now?
No wonder the White House is gleefully winking and nudging everyone in the direction of this Republican clown car of awfulness -- if not for the political advantage, for the sheer spectacle of watching the once mighty Republican Party effectively screwing itself. The Democrats, on one hand, appear to be busily going about the business of cleaning up the mess left behind by three decades of Reaganomics while, on the other the hand, the Republicans are duct-taping themselves to the ample bosom of the most self-satirical political sideshow geek in American media history, while also expecting this will help their electoral chances.
BobCesca.com

Fears of a Clown

Tim Egan (NY Times)
Once upon a time, you could drive to the most remote reaches of the United States and escape Rush Limbaugh. But from the Mogollon Mountains of New Mexico to the Badlands of South Dakota, where only the delicious twang of a country tune or the high-pitched pleadings of a lone lunatic came over the AM dial, there is now the Mighty El Rushbo.
As someone who spends a lot of time on the road, I used to find Limbaugh to be an obnoxious but entertaining companion, his eruptions more reliable than Old Faithful. But now that Limbaugh has become something else — the face of the Republican Party, by a White House that has played him brilliantly — he has been transformed into car-wreck-quality spectacle, at once scary and sad.
Behold:
The sweaty, swollen man in the black, half-buttoned shirt who ranted for nearly 90 minutes Saturday at the Conservative Political Action Conference. He reiterated his desire to see the president of his country fail. He misstated the Constitution’s intent while accusing President Obama of “bastardizing” the document. He made fun of one man’s service in Vietnam, to laughter

David Letterman compared him to an Eastern European gangster. But he looked more like a bouncer at a strip club who spent all his tips on one bad outfit. And for the Republican Party, Limbaugh has become very much a vice.
Smarter Republicans know he is not good for them. As the conservative writer David Frum said recently, “If you’re a talk radio host and you have five million who listen and there are 50 million who hate you, you make a nice living. If you’re a Republican party, you’re marginalized.”
Polling has found Limbaugh, a self-described prescription-drug addict who sees America from a private jet, to be nearly as unpopular as Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who damned America in the way that Limbaugh has now damned the nation’s newly elected leader. But Republicans just can’t quit him. So even poor Michael Steele, the nominal head of the Republican Party who dared to criticize him, had to grovel and crawl back to the feet of Limbaugh.
Some expected more mettle from Steele. After all, this rare African-American Republican won his post after defeating a candidate who submitted the parody song from Limbaugh’s show: “Barack the Magic Negro.”
Race is an obsession with Limbaugh, one of the threads I noticed on those long drives on country roads.
When Colin Powell endorsed Obama during the campaign, Limbaugh said it was entirely because of race. After the election, Powell said the way for the party, which has been his home, to regain its footing was to say the Republican Party must stop “shouting at the world.”
In 2003, Limbaugh said quarterback Donovan McNabb was overrated because the media wanted a black to succeed. Over the next six years, McNabb threw for nearly 150 touchdowns and went to a Super Bowl.
And Limbaugh launched the current battle when he said of Obama: “We are being told that … we have to bend over, grab the ankles, bend over forward, backward, whichever, because his father was black, because this is the first black president.”
Translation: submit sexually to a black man because “someone” is telling us all to. Who? Which leaders of the Democratic Party have made such a claim? Which opinion-makers? But therein lies the main tactic of Limbaugh, an old demagogue technique: create a straw man, then tear it down. The latest example was Saturday, when Limbaugh presented himself as the defender of capitalism, liberty and unfettered free markets. Obama, he has said since, is waging a “war on capitalism.”
There is a war, all right. We are witnessing the worst debacle of unfettered capitalism in our lifetime brought on by — you got it, capitalism at its worst. It cannibalized itself. Government, sad to say, had nothing to do with it — except for criminal neglect of oversight.
Now that government has been forced to the rescue, just who is insisting on taxpayer bailouts? Who is in line for handouts? Who is saying that only government can save capitalism? The very leaders of unregulated markets who injected this poison into the economy, the very plutocrats that Limbaugh celebrates.
And, of course, let us never forget that the bailouts of banks and insurance companies were initiated by the Republican president Limbaugh defended for eight years.
Of late, Limbaugh has wondered why he has trouble with women. His base is white, male, Republican — people the party has to stop pandering to if it hopes to govern soon.
It’s little wonder that the thrice-married Limbaugh, who uses “femi-Nazi,” “info-babe” and “PMSNBC” (Get it? The network is full of women suffering pre-menstrual cramps, ha-ha), among his monikers for women, can’t get a date with that demographic.
For Democrats, this is all going to plan. It was James Carville and associates who first cooked up associating Limbaugh with the opposition, as Politico reported. Then on Sunday, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said Limbaugh was the “voice and the intellectual force and energy behind the Republican Party.”
Limbaugh played his role, ever the fool. A brave Republican could have challenged him, could have had a “have you no shame” moment with him, giving the party some other identity, some spine. Instead, they caved — from Steele, to the leaders in the House, Eric Cantor and Mike Pence, to Gov. Bobby Jindal, who would be ridiculed by Limbaugh for his real first name, Piyush, were he a Democrat.
You could almost hear their teeth clattering in fear of the all-powerful talk radio wacko, the denier of global warming, the man who said Bill Clinton’s economic policies would fail just before an unprecedented run of prosperity.
But Limbaugh has a fear of his own. If people see him purely as an “entertainer,” as Steele suggested, he will be exposed for what he is: a clown with a very large audience.

Science Defense Contractor Leaks Obama's Presidential Helicopter Plans to Iran

Jason Mick
Highly classified schematics of Obama's presidential helicopter, Marine One, recently leaked to Iran from a defense contractor, via P2P networks. (Source: Tiversa/WPXI)
Blueprints found on Iranian P2P networks, authorities are investigating this serious breach
When it comes to national security, one of the keys to keeping the American President safe is the fleet of executive aircraft -- from presidential helicopters, to the ultra-high-tech jet fortress, Air Force One. Thus it came as quite a shock to the security community when security firm Tiversa discovered blueprints of the Barack Obama's presidential helicopter, Marine One, being hosted by an Iranian IP address.The leaked plans included details on the helicopter's communications and engineering. Describes Bob Boback, CEO of Tiversa, "We found a file containing entire blueprints and avionics package for Marine One,which is the president's helicopter. What appears to be a defense contractor in Bethesda, MD had a file sharing program on one of their systems that also contained highly sensitive blueprints for Marine One."Mr. Boback believes the leak may be innocent in nature. He points out that many file sharing programs automatically share the contents of your entire hard drive. The employee may merely have downloaded a P2P client to download music and videos and ended up unwittingly leaking the highly confidential information on Marine One. Says Mr. Boback, "When downloading one of these file-sharing programs, you are effectively allowing others around the world to access your hard drive."Retired Gen. Wesley Clark, who consults with Tiversa, says that at least the breach has been fully traced. He states, "We found where this information came from. We know exactly what computer it came from. I'm sure that person is embarrassed and may even lose their job, but we know where it came from and we know where it went."According to Mr. Boback, they have notified the appropriate authorities, which are taking steps to safeguard the President. He states, "They are working through a process to maintain the security of the president."Iran is just one of several nations in the Middle East to comb P2P networks, he says. He states, "We've noticed it out of Pakistan, Yemen, Qatar, and China. They are actively searching for information that is disclosed in this fashion because it is a great source of intelligence."Rep. Jason Altmire (D - PA) said he was disturbed by the incident, and called on measures to monitor P2P networks more carefully for classified information. He states, "Well, I'm very troubled to hear this because there are obviously elements in Iran that are not friendly to the United States and it would be an understatement to say that this type of information could be very detrimental were it to fall into the wrong hands."Retired Gen. Clark aptly points out, "Once it's out there, it's hard to get it back. I don't think the full ramifications of this have been understood by the watchdog agencies."

The following is a raw transcript of Rush Limbaugh's speech on the final day of CPAC.
RUSH: Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you all very, very much. Thank you all. I can't tell you how wonderful that makes me feel. It happens everywhere I go, but it's still special here. [ Laughter ] If you all will indulge me, I learned something, I guess, it's early Friday morning that I didn't know. Friday morning is when I learned this. I learned that Fox, God love them, is televising this speech on the Fox News Channel, which means, ladies and gentleman, this is my first ever address to the nation. [Applause] Now, I have someone in back taking phone numbers. In fact, I would like to introduce to you my security chief, a man who runs all of my security. His name is Joseph Stalin. Joseph, would you please --
[Laughter ] I am safe from any liberal attack, in public, because they would be afraid of offending Stalin.
[Laughter] Now the opportunity here to address the nation, a serious one, it really is. And I want to take it seriously. I want to address something. I know that people are probably watching this who never have listened to my program and may not even really know what conservatism is. They think they do based on how they've been told -- the way we've been impugned and maligned and so forth. One of the things that is totally erroneous about me -- and I just want to get this up front -- is that I'm pompous. [Laughter] And that I am arrogant. Neither of these things are remotely true. I can tell you a joke to illustrate this. Larry King passed away, goes to heaven. He's greeted by Saint Peter at the gates. Saint Peter says, "Welcome, Mr. King, it's great to have you here. I want to show you around, give you an idea of what's here, maybe you can pick a place that you'd like to reside." King says, "I just have one question: Is Rush Limbaugh here?" "No, he's got a lot of time yet, Mr. King." So Saint Peter begins the tour. Larry King sees the various places and it's beyond anything we can imagine in terms of beauty. Finally, he gets to the biggest room of all, with this giant throne. And over the throne is a flashing beautiful angelic neon sign that says "Rush Limbaugh."
[Laughter] And Larry King looks at Saint Peter and says: "I thought you said he wasn't here." "He said, he's not, he's not. This is God's room. He just thinks he's Rush Limbaugh."
[Laughter] [Applause] So you see I'm not pompous.
[Laughter] Now, seriously, for those of you watching on C-SPAN as well, and on Fox, I want to tell you who we all are in this room. I want to tell you who conservatives are. We conservatives have not done a good enough job of just laying out basically who we are because we make the mistake of assuming people know. What they know is largely incorrect based on the way we are portrayed in pop culture, in the Drive-By Media, by the Democrat Party. Let me tell you who we conservatives are: We love people. [Applause]
When we look out over the United States of America, when we are anywhere, when we see a group of people, such as this or anywhere, we see Americans. We see human beings. We don't see groups. We don't see victims. We don't see people we want to exploit. What we see -- what we see is potential. We do not look out across the country and see the average American, the person that makes this country work. We do not see that person with contempt. We don't think that person doesn't have what it takes. We believe that person can be the best he or she wants to be if certain things are just removed from their path like onerous taxes, regulations and too much government. [Applause]
We want every American to be the best he or she chooses to be. We recognize that we are all individuals. We love and revere our founding documents, the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. [Applause] We believe that the preamble to the Constitution contains an inarguable truth that we are all endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights, among them life. [Applause] Liberty, Freedom. [Applause] And the pursuit of happiness. [Applause] Those of you watching at home may wonder why this is being applauded. We conservatives think all three are under assault. [Applause] Thank you. Thank you.
We don't want to tell anybody how to live. That's up to you. If you want to make the best of yourself, feel free. If you want to ruin your life, we'll try to stop it, but it's a waste. We look over the country as it is today, we see so much waste, human potential that's been destroyed by 50 years of a welfare state. By a failed war on poverty. [Applause] We love the people of this country. And we want this to be the greatest country it can be, but we do understand, as people created and endowed by our creator, we're all individuals. We resist the effort to group us. We resist the effort to make us feel that we're all the same, that we're no different than anybody else. We're all different. There are no two things or people in this world who are created in a way that they end up with equal outcomes. That's up to them. They are created equal, given the chance - -[Applause] We don't hate anybody. We don't -- I mean, the racism in this country, if you ask me, I know many people in this audience -- let me deal with this head on. You know what the cliche is, a conservative: racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe. Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen of America, if you were paying attention, I know you were, the racism in our culture was exclusively and fully on display in the Democrat primary last year. [Applause]
It was not us asking whether Barack Obama was authentic. What we were asking is: Is he wrong? We concluded, yes. We still think so. But we didn't ask if he was authentically black. We didn't say, as some Southern Christian Leadership Conference leaders said: Barack is not authentic, he's not got any slave blood. He's really not down for the struggle, but his wife is. So don't expect the race industry to go away. Southern Christian Leadership Conference -- you may not know this, because it wasn't reported in the Drive-By Media -- the racism, the sexism, the bigotry that we're all charged with, just so you across the United States of America know, and you'll see demonstrated here as the afternoon goes on, doesn't exist on our side. We want everybody to succeed. [Applause] You know why? We want the country to succeed, and for the country to succeed, its people -- its individuals -- must succeed. Everyone among us must be pursuing his ambition or her desire, whatever, with excellence. Trying to be the best they can be. Not told, as they are told by the Democrat Party: You really can't do that, you don't have what it takes, besides you're a minority or you're a woman and there are too many people that want to discriminate against you. You can't get anywhere. You need to depend on us. Well. Take a look, someone has to say this -- I am thrilled for the opportunity to say it in my first national address to the nation -- and I'm going to touch on this in more detail in a moment, but this is just to get you thinking -- take a look at all the constituency groups that for 50 years have been depending on the Democrat Party to improve their lives. And you tell me if you find any. They're still complaining, still griping about the same problems. Their problems don't get fixed by government. And those lives have been poisoned. Those lives have been cut short by false promises, from government representatives who said don't worry about it, we'll take care of you. Just vote for us. [Applause]
For those of you just tuning in on the Fox News Channel or C-SPAN, I'm Rush Limbaugh and I want everyone in this room and every one of you around the country to succeed. I want anyone who believes in life, liberty, pursuit of happiness to succeed. And I want any force, any person, any element of an overarching Big Government that would stop your success, I want that organization, that element or that person to fail. I want you to succeed. [Applause] Also, for those of you in the Drive-By Media watching, I have not needed a teleprompter for anything I've said. [Cheers and Applause ]
And nor do any of us need a teleprompter, because our beliefs are not the result of calculations and contrivances. Our beliefs are not the result of a deranged psychology. Our beliefs are our core. Our beliefs are our hearts. We don't have to make notes about what we believe. We don't have to write down, oh do I believe it do I believe that we can tell people what we believe off the top of our heads and we can do it with passion and we can do it with clarity, and we can do it persuasively. Some of us just haven't had the inspiration or motivation to do so in a number of years, but that's about to change. [Cheers and Applause] For example, we gather here -- I understand that. I talked to David and Lisa in the super exclusive private green room that nobody, but about 55 people were allowed into, and they said that there's a sense of liberation here among all of you that are attending CPAC. I understand what the sense of liberation is about. But don't make the mistake at the same time of feeling liberated as thinking we're better and we can do better as a minority. Because we're not a minority. And if you start thinking of yourselves as a minority, you're going to be defensive. And you'll allow the majority to set the agenda and the premise and you're responding to it. The American people may not all vote the way we wish them to, but more Americans than you now live their lives as conservatives in one degree or another. And they are waiting for leadership. We need conservative leadership. We can take this country back. All we need is to nominate the right candidate. It's no more complicated than that. [Applause]
Now, let me speak about President Obama for just a second. President Obama is one of the most gifted politicians, one of the most gifted men that I have ever witnessed. He has extraordinary talents. He has communication skills that hardly anyone can surpass. No, seriously. No, no, I'm being very serious about this. It just breaks my heart that he does not use these extraordinary talents and gifts to motivate and inspire the American people to be the best they can be. He's doing just the opposite. And it's a shame. [Applause]
President Obama has the ability -- he has the ability to inspire excellence in people's pursuits. He has the ability to do all this, yet he pursues a path, seeks a path that punishes achievement, that punishes earners and punishes -- and he speaks negatively of the country. Ronald Reagan used to speak of a shining city on a hill. Barack Obama portrays America as a soup kitchen in some dark night in a corner of America that's very obscure. He's constantly telling the American people that bad times are ahead, worst times are ahead. And it's troubling, because this is the United States of America. Anybody ever ask -- I'm in awe of our country and I ask this question a lot as I've gotten older. We're less than 300 years old. We are younger than nations that have been on this planet for thousands of years. We, nevertheless, in less than 300 years -- by the way, we're no different than any other human beings around the world. Our DNA is no different. We're not better just because we're born in America. There's nothing that sets us apart. How did this happen? How did the United States of America become the world's lone super power, the world's economic engine, the most prosperous opportunity for an advanced lifestyle that humanity has ever known? How did this happen? And why pray tell does the President of the United States want to destroy it? It saddens me. The freedom we spoke of earlier is the freedom, it's the ambition, it's the desire, the wherewithal, the passions that people have that gave us the great entrepreneurial advances, the great inventions, the greatest food production, the human lifestyle advances in this country. Why shouldn't that be rewarded? Why is that now the focus of punishment? Why is that now the focus of blame? Why doesn't -- Mayor Bloomberg the other day, ladies and gentlemen, resisting his Governor's call for an increased tax on the rich in New York had some astounding numbers. Eight million people live in New York. 40,000 of those eight million pay roughly 60 to 70% of New York's operating budget. He was afraid that if he raised taxes on those people some of them might leave. Mayor, one already has, by the way. [Applause]
Stop and think of this, though. Stop and think of this. Forty thousand people out of eight million. He's right, if 10,000 of them leave, or 5,000, they've got a huge problem. Because New York has its own welfare state inside the one the federal government's created. They've got a dependency class that has grown up and been educated that their entitlement is to be fed and taken care of by these evil mean people who have more than they do. If New York City, New York State or Washington, DC were a business, these 40,000 people would be taken on golf tournament trips to Los Angeles, and they would be wined and dined and they would be thanked and they would be encouraged to keep it up. They wouldn't be told they're the problem. They wouldn't be told, except there's -- I pride my accuracy rating. There is one other business where the customer is always wrong and that's the media. Sorry about that. [Applause]
Have you ever called to complain about whatever they do? They say, yes, sir, yes, sir, three bags full. They hang up and say you're too stupid to know how they're doing what they're doing. You can't get it. You're not sophisticated enough. So that's another business where the customer is always wrong. But, seriously, the people who have achieved great things, most of it is not inherited. Most wealth in this country is the result of entrepreneurial, just plain old hard work. There's no reason to punish it. There's no reason to raise taxes on these people. Barack Obama, the Democrat Party, have one responsibility, and that's to respect the oath they gave to protect, defend and follow the US Constitution. [Applause] They don't have the right to take money that's not theirs, from the back pockets of producers, and give it to groups like ACORN, which are going to advance the Democrat Party. If anybody but government were doing this, it would be a crime. And many of us think it's bordering on that as it exists now. [Applause]
President Obama is so busy trying to foment and create anger in a created atmosphere of crisis, he is so busy fueling the emotions of class envy that he's forgotten it's not his money that he's spending. [Applause] In fact, the money he's spending is not ours. He's spending wealth that has yet to be created. And that is not sustainable. It will not work. This has been tried around the world. And every time it's been tried, it's a failed disaster. What's the longest war in American history? Did somebody say the war on poverty? Smart group. War on poverty. The war on poverty essentially started in the '30s as part of the New Deal, but it really ramped up in the '60s with Lyndon Johnson, part of the Great Society war on poverty. We have transferred something like 10 trillion, maybe close to 11 trillion, from producers and earners to nonproducers and nonearners since 1965. Yet, as I listen to the Democratic Party campaign, why, America is still a soup kitchen, the poor is still poor and they have no hope and they're poor for what reason? They're poor because of us, because we don't care, and because we've gotten rich by taking from them, that's what kids in school are taught today. That's what others have said to the media. You know why they're poor, you know why they remain poor? Because their lives have been destroyed by the never-ending government hay that's designed to help them, but it destroys ambition. It destroys the education they might get to learn to be self-fulfilling. [Applause]
And it breaks our heart. It breaks our heart. We lose track of numbers with all of the money, with all the money that's been transferred, redistributed, with all the charitable giving in this country. Ladies and gentlemen, there ought not be any poverty except those who are genuinely ill equipped. But most of the people in poverty in this country are equipped for far much more. They've just been beaten down. They're told don't worry, we'll take care of you. There's nothing out there for you anyway; you'll be discriminated against. Breaks our heart to see this. We can't have a great country and a growing economy with more and more people being told they have a right, because of some injustice that's been done to them or some discrimination, that they have a right to the earnings of others. And it's gotten so out of hand now that what worries me is that this administration, the Barack Obama administration is actively seeking to expand the welfare state in this country because he wants to control it. George Will once asked Dr. Friedrich Von Hayek, tremendous classical economist, great man, 1975, George Will, Dr. Von Hayek, why is it that intellectuals, supposed smartest people in the room, why is it that intellectuals can look right out their windows, their own homes and cars and look at their universities and not see the bounties and the growth and the greatness of capitalism? And Von Hayek said: I've troubled over this for years and I've finally concluded that for intellectuals, pseudo-intellectuals, and all liberals, it's about control. It's not about raising revenue. You think Obama has any intention of paying for all this spending? Folks, if he had any intention of paying for it, he wouldn't do 90% of it because we don't have the money. [Applause]
They don't care about paying for it. All that's just words. All that's just rhetoric paying for it because he knows you have to worry about paying for it. He knows we all have to be concerned -- oh, except, wrong again. Except the words of Barney Frank and Chris Dodd who were given homes that everybody knew they could never pay for, and now Barney Frank and Chris Dodd, the architects along with Bill Clinton of the policy that gave us the whole sub-prime mortgage crisis, get to sit around and act as innocent spectators to investigate what went on when they largely had the biggest role in causing it. [Applause] Congressman Frank's definition of affordable housing is you get a house you don't have to pay for that everybody else in the neighborhood will pay for. Why? Because it's unfair that some people can have a house and some people can't. Geez, it's just unfair. So here we have two systems. We have socialism, collectivism, Stalin, whatever you want to call it, versus capitalism. Admittedly over on the right side capitalism there will be unequal outcomes because we're all different. And some of us care more and have more passion and we know what we want to do and others are still struggling for it. Some people are just going to work harder than others. Okay. You get what you work for. Those who have a genuine inability for whatever reason are taken care of. We're compassionate people. On the left side when you get into this collectivism socialism stuff, these people on the left, the Democrats and liberals today claim that they are pained by the inequities and the inequalities in our society. And they believe that these inequities and inequalities descend from the selfishness and the greed of the achievers. And so they tell the people who are on different income quintiles, whatever lists, they say it's not that you're not working hard enough, you could have what they have, perhaps, if you applied it. They're stealing it from you.
So what liberals do, and I say this again to the -- another thing, I know people in the country are watching. I was watching a focus group after some event this week. Might have been after Obama's State of the Union show. [Laughter] And they had -- it was a typical, you know, Drive-By Media focus group. They round up losers -- [Laughter] -- who hear Obama speak and think that the next day their gas tanks are going to be filled up and get a new house and a new kitchen and a new car. And so this one guy said -- oh, it was some guy responding to Bobby Jindal. Oh, by the way did you hear about Joe Biden? Joe Biden was mystified how Bobby Jindal got his shift off at 7-Eleven that night to make the speech. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Time out. Suspend speech for explanation. People watching at home. I'm glad this happened. Glad this happened. You think I just made a joke, an ethnic joke about Bobby Jindal, don't you? I didn't. I made a joke about the bigotry of the Vice President of the United States, Joe Biden. It was Joe Biden while walking through the train station he knows so well because he's such a real guy, that he made a comment that you can't go into a 7-Eleven without seeing some Indian guy behind the counter. They're all over the place. Now, let a conservative say something like that and he's brought up before John Conyers' committee with Pat Leahy wanting at you next. Many people think I lose my place in these speeches because -- by the way what time is it? We have plenty of time. We have to be out of here by -- [Applause]
We have to be out of here by 6:00 -- okay, depends on how you behave. I'll decide as we go on. What liberalism Democrat, for those of you in the country, I really want you to believe this because it's the truth. I'm not saying it just because I believe it. This is a core. I want the best country we can have. We want the most prosperous people. We want to be growing. We want to lead the world. We want everybody to come here legally. We want this country to be so damn great and we just cringe to watch it -- basically capitalism be assaulted and our culture be reoriented to where the people that make it work are the enemy. That's not the United States of America. The people that make this country work, the people who pay on their mortgages, the people getting up and going to work, striving in this recession to not participate in it, they're not the enemy. They're the people that hire you. They're the people that are going to give you a job. They're the people that are going to give you a raise, the people that need you to do work for them. [Applause]
President Obama, and take your pick of any Democrat, love to say we've tried it your way. Meaning Reaganism. We've tried it your way. We tried it your way in the '80s and it didn't work. We tried it your way eight years, the last eight years and it didn't work. Excuse me. Excuse me. Have you ever noticed those of you watching around the world in my first international address to the world, Fox is on some international satellites. They're watching this in the UK right now going (cringing). When Obama talks about past economies, he somehow always leaves out the recession of the '80s as worse than this one. Why does he leave it out? Because you know why he leaves it out, America? He leaves it out because we got out of that recession with tax cuts. [Applause] For those of you watching at home, I'm not nervous it's just really hot in here. These people are wired. We got out of the 1980s recession with tax cuts. Do you know that President Obama, in six weeks of his administration, has proposed more spending than from the founding of the country to his inauguration? Now, this is not prosperity. It is not going to engender prosperity. It's not going to create prosperity and it's also not going to advance or promote freedom. It's going to be just the opposite. There are going to be more controls over what you can and can't do, how you can and can't do it, what you can and can't drive, what you can and can't say, where you can and can't say it. All of these things are coming down the pike, because it's not about revenue generation to them, it's about control. They do believe that they have compassion. They do believe they care. But, see, we never are allowed to look at the results of their plans, we are told we must only look at their good intentions, their big hearts. The fact that they have destroyed poor families by breaking up those families by offering welfare checks to women to keep having babies no more father needed, he's out doing something, the government's the father, they destroy the family. We're not supposed to analyze that. We're not supposed to talk about that. We're supposed to talk about their good intentions. They destroy people's futures. The future is not Big Government. Self-serving politicians. Powerful bureaucrats. This has been tried, tested throughout history. The result has always been disaster. President Obama, your agenda is not new. It's not change, and it's not hope. [Applause]
Spending a nation into generational debt is not an act of compassion. All politicians, including President Obama, are temporary stewards of this nation. It is not their task to remake the founding of this country. It is not their task to tear it apart and rebuild it in their image. (Crowd chanting "USA")
It is not their task, it is not their right to remake this nation to accommodate their psychology. I sometimes wonder if liberalism is not just a psychosis or a psychology, not an ideology. It's so much about feelings, and the predominant feeling that liberalism is about is about feeling good about themselves and they do that by telling themselves they have all this compassion. You know, if you really want to unhinge a liberal it's hard to do because they're so unhinged now anyway, even after -- but all you have to do is say you know that the things you people do, the things you people believe in are cruel. That's the last way they look at themselves. They are the best people on the -- they're the good people. You tell them that their ideas and that their policies are cruel and the eggs start scrambling. I have learned how to tweak liberals everywhere. I do it instinctively now. Tweak them in the media. And no reason to be afraid of these people. Why in the world would you be afraid of the deranged? There really is no reason to be afraid of them. And there's no reason to assume they're the minority. And there's no reason to let them set all the premises and all the agendas to which we respond to. I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself here but everybody asks me and I'm sure it's been a focal point of your convention: What do we do as conservatives? What do we do? How do we overcome this? Well, the one thing, and there are many, but one thing that we can all do is stop assuming that the way to beat them is with better policy ideas right now. I don't want to name any names. It's not the point.
But I talk to people about the Obama budget or the Obama Porkulous bill or whatever else TARP 2 whatever it's going to be, and they start talking to me in the terms of process and policy. I say stop it. What do you mean? Who is setting the process or policy? They are. You want to tweak it? No. This is philosophy, folks. This guy, I forgot -- the guy in the focus group after Bobby Jindal said, I didn't want to hear him talk, he said: Republicans and Democrats. Republicans and Democrats. Ladies and gentlemen of the United States of America, that's exactly what your future is about, who wins, Republicans or Democrats, conservatives versus liberals. The notion of partisanship, false premise. Let me define bipartisanship for you. Bipartisanship -- everybody seems to go orgasmic over the concept of bipartisanship. Don't worry, I checked with Fox, that word's okay. [Laughter] [Applause]
Remember, they covered the Lewinsky thing, so that's my -- bipartisanship occurs only after one other result, and that is victory. In other words, let's say as conservatives liberals demand that we be bipartisan with them in Congress. What they mean is: We check our core principles at the door, come in, let them run the show and agree with them. That's bipartisanship to them. To us, bipartisanship is them being forced to agree with us after we politically have cleaned their clocks and beaten them. And that has to be what we're focused on. [Applause] Why would any of us in this room who hold the core beliefs we believe, somebody tell me where is the compromise on all of this spending? Where is the compromise on all this punishment of the achievers. I don't know. [Laughter] [Applause]
Where is the compromise between good and evil? Should Jesus have cut a different deal? Serious. From the standpoint of what we have to do, folks, this is not about taking a policy or a process that the Democrats have put forward and fighting around the edges. If we're going to convince the minds and hearts of the American people that what's about to happen to them is as disastrous as anything in their lives in peacetime, we're going to have to discuss philosophy with them. We are going to have to talk about principles, because our principles are not present in what's happening here. So where the hell do we go to compromise what we believe in when our principles are not their principles, they're just the opposite of what's happening? [Applause]
The American people -- it's a tough challenge. I admit -- I admit it's a tough challenge, but it's worth it. It's worth it. The way I just defined bipartisanship you could turn it around and liberals will define bipartisanship when we surrender and say okay we give. We're not quitting. We are not giving up. The country is too important. [Applause] There are certain realities. We don't have the votes in Capitol Hill to stop what's going to happen. What we can do is slow it down, procedure, parliamentary procedures, slow it down and do the best we can to inform the American people of what's really on the horizon. I know it's going to be tough. At some points, I don't think it can happen even right now. This is still the honeymoon period, and there's a lot of devotion to the Obama administration. It doesn't have anything to do with intellectual thinking, it's feelings. It's going to take some time for this to play out. But I spoke to David Keene, interviewing him for my newsletter. I asked him about this. He said they're going to overreach. Wouldn't you say they have? [Laughter].
They're going to overreach. At some point, at some point people have got to realize none of this is possible. You can't have people living in homes they don't pay for. You can't have people driving cars they don't pay for. I mean, you can for a while. But after a while the people paying for it -- screw this. We're not putting up with it. And you're going to see -- you're already starting to see evidence of these. All the tea parties that are starting to bubble up out there. Those are great. Fabulous. [Applause] And here's the big question. Here's the big question. And I ask this again in the context of my first address to the nation. [Laughter] You don't know how I love saying that, how excited I am about this. Aside from the bastardization of the Constitution that the Obama plans are, that TARP is, it's not constitutional. Aside from that, where is the evidence that the people offering all of this have ever succeeded in any similar plans before? There's none. There is no evidence it works. [Applause]
So you say how is he getting it done? Dumb down public education. Emotions. And the ongoing -- this is why I think it's such a waste for a man as gifted as President Obama with the communications skills, you know he could wipe out the Republican Party. He can wipe out the Republican Party if he would inspire this country to be the best it could be, but we don't have to worry about that because that's not what he wants. He wants people in fear, angst and crisis, fearing the worst each and every day because that clears the decks for President Obama and his pals to come in with the answers, which are abject failures, historically shown and demonstrated. Doesn't matter. They'll have control of it when it's all over. And that's what they want. Because they think they can do it better. They see these inequalities, these inequities that capitalism produces. How do they fix it? Do they try to elevate those at the bottom? No! They try to tear down the people at the bottom. It's not fair you're up there. So they whack us. That's not what made the country great.[Applause] And no evidence of it is in play here. John Kerry [Boos], who served in Vietnam. [Laughter] Think about this, and, by the way, Barney Frank got involved with this, too. Northern Trust, a bank in Chicago -- by the way, which holds the mortgage to the Messiah's house, purchased by Tony Rezko, Northern Trust holds the mortgage. Northern Trust was forced, like Wells Fargo was forced, to take TARP money. The Wells Fargo CEO said they were taken into Paulson's room and they were given until 5:00 to sign it. They weren't getting out until they did. They wanted it spread all over the banking business. 17.35.34 Northern Trust was in there. They didn't want it. They took $1.6 billion. As you know, they went out and they sponsored the LA Riveria Open two weeks ago that Phil Mickelson barely hung on and won. [Applause]
And we find out they hired some liberals to entertain, but it still wasn't good enough. They hired Sheryl Crow. And they hired the rock crooner group Chicago, but they had the audacity, Northern Trust did, to entertain their clients, to try to reward their best customers, to get new customers, banking is in trouble, Northern Trust is trying to do what they always do, what all businesses do, and that is mine for new clients and reward existing good customers. Not since they took $1.6 billion, I guess. The haughty John Kerry wrote a piece of legislation said: He's getting sick and tired, sick and tired of these CEOs using taxpayer money to throw all these lavish parties. And I'm saying where do you get yours, Senator? [Applause] Sad thing, sad thing is it works. They've created class envy in so many average Americans that they love hearing that. Yeah, you get even with those bank guys. How is it going to improve here? Let me ask a question for those of you watching my first national address. Take the favorite villain you've got, maybe it's John Thain at Merrill Lynch, because he used his own money, his company's own money, his company's own money, to redecorate a bathroom in an office for $1.2 million. By the way, to do that he had to hire a contractor. They got paid. Had to hire a designer and buy furniture, that's called stimulus. And he did it. But all of a sudden John Thain's thrown out. John Thain is thrown out. He's humiliated and embarrassed; how dare he? He did it a year before they took the TARP money. And all these Congressmen are standing up saying this is not going to happen. We are not going to watch these people capping executive pay while Obama tries to live like one. You know, he's trying to emulate the lifestyle he is attacking. That's what liberals do. Two sets of rules: One for them; one for everybody else. But it's coming. See, if you think that John Thain or the Northern Trust CEO, if you love them getting attacked, if you love them being ripped, ask yourself the next day, do you have any more money in your pocket? Is your life any better because that guy got taken out or down by some haughty senator from Massachusetts?
If you ask yourself this, you'll realize your life is no better off. That the Democrats and Obama are asking you to feel better simply on the basis that they're going to get revenge for you, but your life isn't going to improve, somebody else's is just going to be destroyed and they want you to be happy over that. That's sick. And that is not the United States of America. [Applause] Besides, as far as John Kerry is concerned, if it wasn't for his varicose veins, he would be totally colorless. [Laughter] 17.39.13 Now let's talk about the conservative movement as it were. We, ladies and gentlemen, have challenges that are part and parcel of a movement that feels it has just suffered a humiliating defeat when it's not humiliating. This wasn't a landslide victory, 52 to, what, 46. Fifty-eight million people voted against Obama. There would have been more if we would have had a conservative nominee. [Applause]
I don't mean that -- I mean that in an instructive way, as a lead-in to what I'm talking about here. No humiliating defeat here. I can't -- sometimes I get livid and angry. We do have an organizational problem. We have a challenge. We've got factions now within our own movement seeking power to dominate it, and worst of all to redefine it. Well, the Constitution doesn't need to be redefined. Conservative intellectuals, the Declaration of Independence does not need to be redefined and neither does conservatism. Conservatism is what it is and it is forever. It's not something you can bend and shape and flake and form. [Applause] Thank you. Thank you. 17. For the purposes of this occasion, I'm not going to mention any names, I bet with you I won't have to. People watching my first address to the nation might be curious what I'm talking about. They'll find out in due course, trust me on this. I cringed -- it might have been 2007, late 2007 or sometime during 2008, but a couple of prominent conservative but Beltway establishment media types began to write on the concept that the era of Reagan is over. [Crowd Booing]
And that we needed to adapt our appeal, because, after all, what's important in politics is winning elections. And so we have to understand that the American people, they want Big Government. We just have to find a way to tell them we're no longer opposed to that. We will come up with our own version of it that is wiser and smarter, but we've got to go get the Walmart voter, and we've got to get the Hispanic voter, and we've got to get the recalcitrant independent women. And I'm listening to this and I am just apoplectic: The era of Reagan is over? When the hell do you hear a Democrat say the era of FDR is over? You never hear it. Not only that, the President of the United States today thinks he's FDR, thinks he's Abraham Lincoln, and sometimes, Tuesday night, thinks he's Ronald Reagan. Our own movement has members trying to throw Reagan out while the Democrats know they can't accomplish what they want unless they appeal to Reagan voters. We have got to stamp this out within this movement, because it will tear us apart. It will guarantee we lose elections. [Applause]
We have to. You see, to me it's a no-brainer. It's not even something to me: How do you get rid of Reagan from conservatism? The blueprint -- the blueprint for landslide conservative victory is right there. Why in the hell do the smartest people in our room want to chuck it? I know why. I know exactly why. It's because they're embarrassed of some of the people who call themselves conservatives. These people in New York and Washington, cocktail elitists, they get made fun of when the next NASCAR race is on TV and their cocktail buds come up to them, those people are in your party? How do you put up with this? It would be easy to throw them overboard, so as to maintain these cocktail party/Beltway/New York City/inside-the-Beltway media relationships. 17.44.01 But I tell you: This notion that Reaganism is dead, conservatism needs to be refined, let's take a look at this. We've got to go get the Walmart voter. I opened my remarks tonight by telling the people watching on Fox who we conservatives are. When I look out at you in this audience, I don't see a Walmart voter. And I don't see a black, and I don't see a woman, and I don't see a Hispanic. I see human beings who happen to be fortunate enough to be the luckiest people on Earth since you are Americans. [Applause]
Conservatism -- for us to make the decision that we've got to figure out policies, to get the Walmart voter -- psst, we've got most of them already, is the bottom line. Conservatism is a universal set of core principles. You don't check principles at the door. This is a battle that we're going to have. And there are egos involved here, too. When the situation like ours exists, there are people who want to lead it. They want to redefine it. Their egos are such that they want to be the next X, whoever it is. So there will be different factions lining up to try to define what conservatism is.

And beware of those different factions who seek as part of their attempt to redefine conservatism, as making sure the liberals like us, making sure that the media likes us. They never will, as long as we remain conservatives. They can't possibly like us; they're our enemy. In a political arena of ideas, they're our enemy. They think we need to be defeated. Why do you think -- you all in this room know this. For those of you watching at home, my first address to the nation -- [Laughter] -- I'm sure you paid close enough attention, that you knew at one time Senator McCain was the favorite Republican of all the cable news networks and the Sunday shows. And they would just -- I mean their tongues would be on the floor. The media people (panting) when they knew McCain was coming. And they would treat McCain as the greatest guy in the world. Did you wonder why? You were told he was moderate. He was not strict. He was not an authoritarian, he was able to walk to the other side of the aisle, able to get along with the enemy. And everybody wants love and bipartisanship. That's not why they invited Senator McCain. They invited Senator McCain because he happened to be the loudest at criticizing his own president and his own party and that's what they want, is people from our side -- and there will be factions in our movement, folks, who are going to make an effort to say we have to grow, we can't stay stale, I think I heard the term used the other day. Nothing stale about freedom. There's nothing stale about liberty. There's nothing stale about fighting for it. Nothing stale whatsoever. [Applause] Freedom. Are you getting tired of standing up, I don't blame you. By the way for those watching on TV you think the standing -- people are just tired. They've been up and out of their chairs 100 times here. [Applause]
Thank you. Freedom -- freedom is the natural yearning of the human spirit as we were endowed by our creator. And the United States of America is the place in the world where that yearning flourishes, where freedom is expected because it's part of the way we're created.
I loved it when the Soviet Union went down and the wall went down and the liberals in our country said you know they may not be ready for freedom over there. They've been oppressed -- yes, liberals will gladly tell you who can have freedom and who can't. And that's what the pieces of legislation are all about, folks, freedom, liberty, economic prosperity, they're all entwined here. We'll have to as a conservative movement understand that our job, after we come to an agreement among ourselves, which shouldn't be hard but it's going to be difficult because the people that think they're smarter than everybody else are going to be out there forging alliances with people that try to make themselves look like new power brokers, and they will become the spokesmen, by the way. By the way, explain that to you. This is a funny story. Show you how I can hijack a news cycle even by doing anything. The Tuesday before the inauguration, President Bush invited me to the Oval Office for lunch. And it was on and off the record, some of the conversations. And he brought out, interesting, at the end of it -- my birthday had been the day before. He brought out a chocolate birthday cake, a microphone, and stood beside me with Ed Gillespie and sang happy birthday. Photographers taking pictures. I wish my parents were alive. My parents wouldn't believe my life. They came out of the Great Depression. They didn't think it was possible for somebody who did not go to college -- and even for people who did -- they didn't think this was possible. Life has changed so much for the better in this country.
That's why I cringe when I see what is in store. So as I'm flying home from lunch, I'm watching television and I see that the word has leaked out that Obama is hosting a dinner with conservative media pundits at the home of George Will. I said: I wonder who these people are? [Laughter] In the media, one of them is going to have to leak it. Sure as heck, one did. Now, we all know who were there. And let's see -- I can't remember all the names, so I won't mention any. But let me tell you Obama's purpose. Does anybody really think that Barack Obama had dinner with a bunch of conservatives hoping they would change his mind?
CROWD: No!
RUSH: Hell, no. His purpose -- and his purpose really wasn't to change theirs -- his purpose was to anoint them as conservative spokesmen. These are the people that Obama's willing to break bread with. These happen -- some of the people there happen to be the people who think the era of Reagan is over, who believe that conservatism needs to be redefined. Of course Obama would try to lure them in. Well, all of a sudden I land. I get home about 5:00, and my e-mail is jammed with questions from reporters, are you, is that why you took the day off today? Is that why you're not on the air? Are you going to dinner with Obama? By the way, I left out a crucial part of the story. Was this a Monday, Kit? It was a Tuesday. I had forgotten to tell my audience that I was going to miss the next day. I signed off the show saying I'll see you tomorrow. That's the last thing I said. The staff reminded me you're not going to be here tomorrow. I came up with a plan, that the guest host the next day would say that I was called out of town to Washington at midnight the night before. Just an innocent little trick on the radio audience. Everybody picked that up and thinks I'm invited to the Obama dinner. So those people that were invited to it got less coverage than I did and I didn't even know about it. [Laughter] It was fun. [Applause]
Conservatives are naturally happy. We seek happiness. We pursue it. It's part of who we are. So what can you do? Live your life. I swear, folks, you do not know in just the everyday life that you live in your homes, your neighborhoods, the favorite word of this administration, your "communities." Remember the root word there is "commune." [Applause] Be happy, live your life according to your values and principles. Know you're going to fail, no human being is perfect, you're going to make mistakes, but live your life -- you'll be stunned at how many people you impress. Don't be afraid to tell children that they're wrong. They don't know what you do. They simply haven't lived long enough. It's not their fault, but they're being fed a bunch of garbage in school and don't be afraid to tell them that they're wrong. Don't go the Oprah route and say gotta be friends with my parents, my kids, first and foremost. Understand they're going to hate you for a while and they're going to rebel against you and someday they're going to think you're the smartest person they ever met. But you owe them the truth. You owe them the truth about things. You owe them the truth about morality. You owe them the truth about values. [Applause]
You owe them the truth about politics. Next thing, we've got to stop treating voters as children. [Applause]
Somebody says they want something that's bad for them, do you give it to them just to be nice? Or do you tell them, regardless of their age, no, you shouldn't have that? Well, it's none of your business. Maybe not. And then you back out of it. But you still have to have the ability to tell people what's right and wrong. And that's not authoritative. That's not authoritarian. And it's not trying to deny somebody a good time. It's not trying to interrupt somebody's hedonism, pleasure, it's about all of us with shared values trying to make sure that people live the highest quality lives they can. Ultimately, it's their decision as to what they do. But the point is, don't treat them -- especially voters -- as kids just -- they say they want it okay we'll come up with a plan to give it to you. Have any of you seen the movie -- I'd never heard of it, but I happened to get a DVD the other day. Anybody see the movie Swing Vote with Kevin Costner? You know, it's kind of a moronic movie like most things out of Hollywood are. But this is fascinating in the way -- tell you a short story, because a voter screwup in New Mexico there's one voter who is going to elect the president. His vote didn't count because his daughter voted for him. I won't give the whole story away. But New Mexico's electoral votes, New Mexico's electoral votes determined it. And they have a two-week period before this guy can vote again. So the challenger and the president both relocate to where this guy lives in New Mexico and they end up like the Democrat played by Dennis Hopper stands for antiabortion.
The Democrat candidate comes out with a commercial for life. The Republican candidate comes out, because this guy is an idiot and doesn't know what he believes, and every utterance that he makes these politicians react to it throwing their principles on the floor, just to get his vote. Sadly, this is what some of the conservative intellectuals in our movement want to do, essentially. And that we cannot do. We've got to stand for what we believe and treat people as adults and understand they can learn. [Applause]
Go optimism. Joe Biden, ladies and gentlemen, was watching CBS -- when did you start here? Thursday. You might have seen this. The days run together. It might have been Wednesday, but Biden was on the CBS Early Show. And he was asked -- the anchorette -- sorry. I'm trying to change my ways. I've been doing women summit programs so not to offend women. The anchor, Maggie Rodriguez, went out and got some man-on-the-street questions. And one guy, woman, I think question for Biden. What is in the stimulus package for small business? Biden was clearly stumped because there isn't anything in the stimulus package for small business. So what Biden said, honest to God, what Biden said was: Well, if there's a bridge to your small business, we're going to make sure that bridge stays open so that you can get to your small business and your customers -- honest. I kid you not. Now, of course, the media today is a bunch of hacks, they're out there as PR agents; they're starting to get a little embarrassed. Maggie Rodriguez says, Senator Biden, there's a website that answers all these questions. What is the name of the website and Biden says I don't know. He looks off stage. "Does somebody have the website number?" [Applause]
I realize those of you watching at home during my first address to the nation, you have never heard liberal Democrats be made fun of in this way. Get used to it. [Applause]
Two other things and we'll get out of here contractually over time. The president's stimulus package, the TARP, the whatever, the budget, relies on one thing for its success. Well, aside from authoritarian government power. It relies on the complacency of the American people. It relies on their belief that they can convince the American people that there's such a crisis that only government, the only entity that can fix it is government, as Obama has said. So they get complacent and they sit around and they wait. See, this is something liberals will never understand about the United States of America and it's right under their noses, right in front of their faces, we are a competitive people. We strive, enough of us do, to be the best. We strive to win. We strive to avoid defeat. Enough of us still do. Don't believe otherwise. The liberals have made efforts to shut that aspect of our nature down. Wherever you live, I am certain that you, when you were a child or your kids today in youth sports are told not to keep score, because the losers, it's just not fair. They'd be humiliated, especially if one girl's basketball team can defeat another one 100 to nothing. And let's fire the coach who put that game together. It's so unfair. So let's not keep score. Well, here's the dirty little secret. The kids are keeping score. [Applause] You know they are. They don't want to lose. They know what winning and losing is. They're saying, well, why go out there and put on the pads and play football or T-Ball if the objective here is to not keep score. So they're keeping score. They get in the car with mom and dad and they tell mom and dad: Yeah, we kicked their butts tonight. Wait a minute, I thought you weren't keeping score. They weren't officially. They keep score. We're competitive people. Adults are doing the same thing.
It didn't take long for people to get fired up when they figured out that they're going to be paying mortgages for people who should never have been lent money in the first place for the bogus excuse of maintaining property values in the neighborhood. This is something that -- the complacency of the American people is something they're going to rely on along with their authoritarian efforts to control it. But they will not succeed at this. Because we're not quitters. We don't acquiesce. We're not going to give up the American dream and watch idly while it is restructured and transformed. [Applause]
As I say, we want the best: Happiness for everybody. Now, about my still-to-me mysteriously controversial comment that I hope President Obama fails. I was watching the Super Bowl. And as you know, I love the Pittsburgh Steelers. [Cheers and Applause] So they have this miraculous scoring drive that puts them up by four, 15 seconds left. Kurt Warner on the field for the Cardinals. And I sure as heck want you to know I hope he failed. I did not want the Cardinals to win. I wanted Warner to make the biggest fool of himself possible. I wanted a sack, I wanted anything. I wanted the Steelers to win. I wanted to win. I wanted the Cardinals to fail. This notion that I want the President to fail, folks, this shows you a sign of the problem we've got. That's nothing more than common sense and to not be able to say it, why in the world do I want what we just described, rampant government growth indebtedness, wealth that's not even being created yet that is being spent, what is in this? What possibly is in this that anybody of us wants to succeed? Did the Democrats want the war on Iraq to fail!
CROWD: Yes!
RUSH: They certainly did. They not only wanted the war in Iraq to fail, they proclaimed it a failure. There's Dingy Harry Reid waiving a white flag: [doing Harry Reid impression] "This war is lost. This war is" --
[Cheers and Applause]
They called General Petraeus a liar before he even testified. Mrs. Clinton -- [Crowd Booing] -- said she had to, willingly suspend disbelief in order to listen to Petraeus. We're in the process of winning the war. The last thing they wanted was to win. They hoped George Bush failed. So what is so strange about being honest to say that I want Barack Obama to fail if his mission is to restructure and reform this country so that capitalism and individual liberty are not its foundation? Why would I want that to succeed? [Applause]
Let me add a caveat here. My friends, I know what's going on. I know what's going on. We're in the aspects here of an historic presidency. I know that. But let me be honest again. I got over the historical aspects of this in November. President Obama is our president. President Obama stands for certain things. I don't care, he could be a Martian. He could be from Michigan, I don't know -- just kidding. Doesn't matter to me what his race is. It doesn't matter. He's liberal is what matters to me. And his articulated -- his articulated plans scare me. Now, I understand we can't say we want the President to fail, Mr. Limbaugh. That's like saying -- this is the voice of the New Castrati, by the way, guys who have lost their guts. You can't say Mr. Limbaugh that you want the President to fail because that's like saying you want the country to fail. It's the opposite. I want the country to survive. I want the country to succeed. [Cheers and Applause]
[Crowd Chanting "USA" ] I want the country to survive as we have known it, as you and I were raised in it, is what I mean. Now, I have been called -- and I can take it. Pioneers take the arrows, I don't mind what anybody says about me, any time ever. I don't have time for it. I don't give other people the power to offend me. And you shouldn't either, by the wasted time being offended.[Applause]
I mean, there's some people you can't say you want the President to fail. Ladies and gentlemen of the United States, the Democrat Party has actively not just sought the failure of Republican presidents and policies and now wars for the first time, the Democrat Party doesn't stop at failure. Talk to Judge Robert Bork or Justice Clarence Thomas about how they tried to destroy lives, reputations and character, and I'm supposed to say I don't want the President to fail? [Applause] We're in for a real battle. We are talking about the United States of America -- and there will always be an America, don't misunderstand me -- we're talking about it remaining the country we were all born into and reared and grown into. And it's under assault. It's always under assault. But it's never been under assault like this from within before. And it's a serious, serious battle. So as you leave here, as you leave here optimism, confidence, not guilt, it's not worth it. There's nothing to be guilty about. Don't treat people as children. Respect their intelligence. Realize that there's a way to persuade people. Sometimes the worst way is to get in their face and point a finger. Set up a set of circumstances where the conclusion is obvious. Let them think they came up with the idea themselves. They'll think they're smart that they figured it out. Who cares how you persuade them, the fact they can be persuaded is factually correct, it's possible. But the main thing to do here is stop thinking that we are a minority. Stop thinking that it is being in the minority that liberates you. It is your beliefs. It is your core principles, it is your confidence that liberates you. It's not being in the minority. In fact, for those of you watching my first national address and still hanging in there, we really are not that happy about being a minority and we're out to change it. [Applause]
So I have -- I've gone over my allotted time by an hour. [Applause]
I want to thank all of you so much for everything that you have meant to me and my family in my life.
CROWD: Thank you.
RUSH: I understand it's mutual. And I hear people -- you have made my heart grow so much that it barely fits in my chest cavity here tonight. But the things that by virtue of your listening to my radio show and being active in this movement that we all cherish and love, you have meant more to me, my family and my life than whatever it is I might mean to you, even though I know that's considerable. [Applause]
You still can't outdo the absolute joy and awe and thanks I feel for all of you. I've been doing this for 20 years and the numbers just keep growing. And I can't tell you how appreciative I am and proud to be in a movement with the same passions, desires and core beliefs that all of you have, because we know that it's right for the country, and we know it's right for people. It's not something that has to be forced on them. It's not something that has to be authoritatively pressed on them. We are what is, and that's why we are an enemy because we're effective. The people that do want control look at us as the enemy. We're always going to be -- don't ever measure your success by how many Drive-By Media reports you see that are fair to us. Never going to happen. Don't measure your success by how many people like you. Just worry about how they vote. And then at the end of the day how they live, but that's really none of your business once they close the doors. Thank you all very much. It's been great.