Global warming? A hoax. Barack Obama? A disaster. John McCain? A winner. So says Rush Limbaugh, America's most listened-to and influential – not to mention richest - radio personality. But will America prove him wrong in the US elections on Tuesday? Interview by Nigel Farndale.

Last Updated: 3:55PM GMT 30 Oct 2008

Rush Limbaugh: He says he's not retiring until everyone agrees with him

 

Although Rush Limbaugh doesn't actually work from a bunker, he does have a bunker mentality. His studio is on the third floor of a (purposefully) anonymous building 100 yards off the white sands of Palm Beach, Florida, and about a mile from his gated mansion (the one next to Chuck Norris's). Along with the Gulfstream jet (cost: $54 million), fleet of sports cars and eight-year contract, worth $400 million, this mansion is his reward for being the most listened-to talk-radio host in America, a title he has held for 20 years.

But it is also his compensation. Professional Right-wing controversialists do tend to upset people, and Limbaugh has had his share of death threats. He has also had his quota of criticism from the media, or the liberal media, as he tends to call it. He hates interviews and has rarely given any, though he does have a soft spot for this newspaper, because it was once owned by his sometime friend and neighbour Conrad Black (currently serving a 6½-year jail sentence for fraud; Limbaugh wrote a letter to the judge attesting to Lord Black's good character).

The 'drive-by media', as Limbaugh also calls it, came down to Florida looking for him when he insulted Michael J.Fox a couple of years ago – by saying the actor was hamming up his Parkinson's disease for political gain after he appeared in an appeal for embryonic stem-cell research. They came back a few months later when Limbaugh was arrested for 'doctor shopping' painkiller prescriptions; that is, persuading several doctors to give him overlapping ones. He pleaded not guilty and cut a deal; the charges were dismissed after 18 months on condition that he continue rehabilitation and treatment with a therapist. The press staked out his mansion on both occasions, but never found his studio on this palm-fringed boulevard. You wouldn't know it was here.

He calls it his 'Southern Command', having spent most of his career broadcasting from New York, and describes it on air as 'heavily fortified', yet when you travel up in a lift and step into a glass and leather reception area, there isn't even a receptionist, let alone a security guard, just several white locked doors and a CCTV camera that follows you. One of the doors buzzes. I am expected.

On the walls of the corridor there is evidence of Limbaugh's considerable power and influence, and his friends in high places. Here a framed picture of him with George Bush. Here one of him with Donald Rumsfeld. Here he is with Hamid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan.

There is a humidor – Limbaugh is a connoisseur of cigars – and a bust of Churchill. There is also a bust of Beethoven, which has a plaque reading: 'A genius who produced masterpieces without hearing.'

Limbaugh became almost completely deaf at the age of 50, but is able to hear callers now thanks to a cochlear implant – an electronic device which stimulates nerves in the inner ear. It explains his way with a monologue, which actually is a dialogue with himself. But even if he could hear, he probably wouldn't listen. Rush Limbaugh is a talker, not a listener. He keeps it up for three hours at a stretch, five days a week from noon until three. There are commercial breaks and phone-ins, but mostly it is him delivering homilies on politics and current affairs, extemporaneously. His fluency is breathtaking.

Some 20 million Americans tune in to hear it on 600 stations across what he calls 'this fruited land'. And he says he's not retiring until everyone agrees with him.

He is on air now – I can hear him over the speakers – 'Welcome back, this is Rush Limbaugh, your shining light, the doctor of democracy, the all-knowing, all-sensing, all-caring Maha Rushie…' I get slightly lost as I'm looking for the control booth and end up in his private washroom. There are several big black polo shirts on hangers and, in his medicine cabinet, cold remedies and bottles of Listerine and Drakkar aftershave, but no painkillers. That ship has sailed, it seems.

For the next two hours I sit behind a glass panel and watch him perform. Though it is radio, his is a physical performance. He raises his arms and shakes them in mock frustration. He takes his glasses off and pinches the bridge of his nose. He drums his fingers, as you can sometimes hear on air. Though he doesn't use notes he does have some papers on his desk which he taps as a form of punctuation, and sometimes he will crumple them up in disgust, another sound effect.

In the corner of his studio he has a standard bearing a silky Stars and Stripes. Behind his desk, there is a neon replica of his signature. At 57, he is looking fitter than he has done for a long time, having shed a hundredweight (he weighed 23 stone at one point).

His hair is slicked back and he is dressed in a black polo shirt and deck shoes without socks. There is a rolling musicality to his voice.

His tone is warm and confidential. He has the rhetorician's habit of repeating himself three times in three different ways.

Today, as usual, he is riffing about Barack Obama – 'the Lord Messiah, the merciful, the acting President…' – whom he dislikes intensely.

When Former Secretary of State Colin Powell announced a few days ago that he would be breaking with his party to vote for Obama, Limbaugh said it was only because he was black. Groan. He was being insulting, of course, on many levels, to both men, but at least he was being consistent with the Limbaugh world view, the view of the fabled 'angry white man'. Indeed, it would have seemed hypocritical of him to start making compromises on the grounds of sensitivity at this stage in his career.

Besides, he doesn't go easier on the McCain camp. He described the Republican candidate as a phony conservative and, when Sarah Palin first appeared, dismissed her as 'some babe McCain met at a convention'. He has come round to Palin since then, saying that she 'kicked Biden's butt' in that vice-presidential debate. His politics are closer to hers than McCain's. And ultimately he would rather have McCain for all his faults than Obama. 'McCain's right,' he said on air recently. 'We do have them right where we want them because they think it's over.' Note the 'We'. Limbaugh does not pretend to be impartial.

Inside the control booth there is a staff of three: Jim, a sound engineer wearing headphones; Dawn, a stenographer with long blonde hair (who sends Limbaugh real-time transcripts of on-air phone-ins), and his long-time producer Bo Snerdly, a tall, well-cushioned Afro-American with an affable manner, a flat cap on backwards and spectacles dangling from a cord around his neck.

Limbaugh does not have sidekicks with him on air, but he does keep up a running conversation with Snerdly, who is almost as Right wing as he is. They banter via an internal talk-back circuit. Snerdly has his own twice-weekly spot on air in which he introduces himself as an 'African-American-in-good-standing-and-certified-black-enough-to-criticise-Obamaguy.' It is a deliberately insensate but amusing take on the race issue in this election. What Left-wingers, or 'Rush-deniers', as he calls them, don't get about the self-aggrandising Limbaugh is that he is first and foremost a satirist: funny, self-mocking and entertaining. He couldn't have held his audience for 20 years if he was only nasty, bigoted and extremely Right wing.

The broadcast over, I join Limbaugh in the studio and ask if he ever has off days when he's not in the mood. Though he can hear, thanks to the acoustics in here, he stares straight at me, lip-reading. 'I have days where I feel I've left half my brain at home and I'm not functioning 100 per cent, but I don't think the audience would ever know it, and there's never a day I don't want to do it. I prep it, but I don't think about it until it starts. At noon today I had no idea what the first thing was I was going to say until about 20 seconds into the theme music. It's improv. Stream of consciousness. That little pressure improves my performance. I do my best, most expansive thinking when I am speaking. I get on a roll.'

He surely does. Limbaugh is always a factor in American elections.

When the Republicans won the House of Representatives in 1994 for only the second time in 50 years, they made Limbaugh an honorary member of Congress. If by some fluke the Republicans win this time, in contradiction of the polls, will that be partly down to Limbaugh?

'That's so hard to measure,' he says.

He's being falsely modest and possibly disingenuous. One of his biggest successes in this election cycle was Operation Chaos, a radio campaign designed to encourage Republicans to vote for Hillary Clinton and prolong internecine fighting among Democrats. Karl Rove, 'the President's brain', reckons it helped tilt Texas for Clinton. She herself said as much the day after the vote: 'Be careful what you wish for, Rush.' Berkeley is doing a course study on it.

'I came up with Operation Chaos because we were facing a Republican primary that was over, with most of my audience dissatisfied with the choice. My audience wasn't up. Excited. Jazzed. I figured we had many more months of the liberal media salivating over the Democratic primaries on the cable networks and that that could be divisive. I don't want Obama to be President, he would be a disaster, but I do want him to be bloodied up politically, be forced to acquit himself to a political audience that isn't sycophantic. Someone had to do it.'

But Obama is the Democratic presidential candidate now and I wonder whether the race issue makes Limbaugh nervous. After all, at a White House correspondents' dinner during the Clinton administration, the President joked that Limbaugh had stood up for Attorney-General Janet Reno, but he 'only did it because she was attacked by a black guy'.

(The 'black guy' being Representative John Conyers.) Limbaugh was in the audience, and he was livid. He demanded, and received, a White House apology. 'There is nothing worse than being branded a racist,' he said afterwards.

On the race issue now, he reckons he has nothing to feel nervous about. 'Obama's people are trying to silence any criticism of him by implying it would be perceived as racist. It's a form of intimidation but I'm not going to be intimidated by them.'

Until 1988, when Limbaugh more or less invented the talk-radio format as a political tool, the liberal media in America had a monopoly, he reckons. 'The reason my show was successful was that so many people with a conservative viewpoint did not think it was being reflected in the media. I validate what they already think.' He reckons he is not always preaching to the choir, though. 'We get Democrats. Calls from people who disagree with me all the time. Last week I had a call from a woman in Dallas who said I was causing her high blood pressure because she couldn't stop herself listening to my show. The doctor told her to stop and she wouldn't.'

His audience is now 12 times the circulation of The New York Times, he tells me. 'And you can add up CNN, MSNBC and Fox, and my audience is 20 times that. They have no pretence of objectivity. They are activists now and they make no bones about it. CNN, MSNBC and Fox all opinionise. Like I do. They acknowledge this, and so it has become a battle between the two medias. The liberal media see this Obama candidacy as historic because race is a big deal to them. They think this country committed Original Sin. I actually believe that most of their support for Obama is that they are creaming in their jeans about the historical nature of the campaign. They want to be a part of it.They want to make it happen. They want a stake in it. They want to be able to say they did it if Obama wins.'

Well, he is going to win, isn't he? 'No. I don't see it, Nigel. I think he's been dead in the water since the primaries. He is going to need to be up 10 to 12 points to win by three or four. Don't forget that Hillary winning was a foregone conclusion, too. If the polls had been right it would have been Giuliani versus Hillary. That's why polls a year out are worthless. Obama is going around as the acting President. It's off-putting. Unionised blue-collar Democrats didn't vote for him, they voted for Hillary.'

Wasn't that to do with race? 'No… well it might be to a certain degree, but there was never any substance to his speeches, just soaring rhetoric. That guy can say nothing better than anyone I have ever heard say nothing.' He drums his fingers. 'My take on this is that we are all Americans and I am sick and tired of hyphenated Americans. Afro-American, Hispanic-Americans.

'I am truly colour blind and I wish everyone else was. We Balkanise when we say only women can represent women in Congress and only Jews can represent Jews and only blacks can represent blacks. It's BS. We all want the same things. Prosperity and a decent education for our kids. Treating this country like it is stuck 50 years ago is BS; we have made more progress than anyone over this. Get over it. If Obama says stupid things I'm not going to say they are not stupid because he's black. He's running for President, for God's sake. It's the Left who has been racist by agonising about whether he is black enough. Is he authentic enough? Does he have a civil rights record? For me he's a liberal. That is reason enough to oppose him.'

Limbaugh thinks there is a war going on between people like him who want small, efficient government and people who want a powerful state that decides who gets what. 'And they use hoaxes like global warming to advance their agenda of higher taxation and bigger government.'

Oh dear. You don't have to agree with his red-meat views to find them insightful. They represent, after all, the authentic voice of conservative, and neo-conservative, America. But there is one issue about which I think he is dangerously wrong. Global warming. After all, I point out, 98 per cent of the world's leading scientists in this area don't think global warming is a hoax.

He stares at me. 'Nigel, man-made global warming is a 100 per cent, full-fledged, undeniable hoax.'

That's his opinion. 'No, it's not even arguable in terms of science.'

Of course it is, I say, and he's being deliberately provocative to say it isn't. 'We don't have the power to make cold weather warm. We can't make warm weather cold. We can't produce rain clouds. We can't steer hurricanes, we can't produce diddly squat and the idea that only advanced democracies are doing this with their automobiles is absurd.

Global warming is a religion. It has what all religions have which is faith, because no one can prove their religion. It has a Garden of Eden element, destruction brought by humanity then redemption for our sins by paying higher taxes and getting rid of our cars and planes.'

Does part of him go after a subject like that just to wind people up?

'No, I believe it. I hate people who feel rather than think. Most people feel they don't matter. When they are told they can save the planet, well, that gives their lives meaning. These stupid ribbons – breast cancer, Aids awareness, they say – "I care more than you." ' He drums his fingers on the table again.

Limbaugh doesn't give the impression of having doubts, but does he?

Does he have long nights of the soul? 'I'd only have those if I had lied, made something up that I don't really believe, for an illicit motive. I won't be deliberately provocative just to get people to listen.'

Was there a point at which he decided he would have to thicken his skin if he was going to last in talk radio – not take insults personally, I mean? 'Insults are badges of honour. There is nothing anyone can say that would offend me. Prior to doing this show no one hated me. No one thought I was a racist, sexist or homophobic bigot.

No one thought I was a hate-monger. I was not raised to be hated. I was raised to be loved. Within six months I was getting death threats.'

For all his claimed equanimity, there is a residual paranoia, vulnerability and vanity that floats around Rush Limbaugh like a toxic cloud. He hates being photographed, for example, because: 'They are going to try to get the most embarrassing or unflattering shot of you they can.' They. Always they. These dark forces out to get him. I ask about the insecurities that lay behind his dependency on painkillers.

There was pain to kill, after all, and it wasn't physical. 'That's all in the past,' he says. 'Done. The rehab was in Arizona. A spartan place called The Meadows. Not one of these half-assed places for celebrities. It was five weeks and I really got into it. Very educational for me to learn about myself. It was inspiring. I can't imagine taking a pain pill now. It holds no attraction. I haven't had a relapse or craving since then. I had to talk to a therapist for 18 months afterwards. Never done that before. Thought it bunk. Actually that helped.'

Born into a family of lawyers, Limbaugh obtained his radio licence at the age of 15 and began Dj-ing on a local radio station. One insecurity that dates back to that time is that he was wounded by his father's disapproval of his chosen profession. He was also miserable when his father insisted he attend college. Under protest, he enrolled at Southeast Missouri State University, where he lasted a year before dropping out. After that he was fired six times by radio stations and other employers. It was a wobbly start and, as a defence mechanism, he seems to have acquired an ultra-confident alter ego.

Nevertheless, he tells me that when he's at home, when he can drop his public guard, he can feel flat. 'Mentally, I'm zapped after this show every day. I don't do anything for three hours. I go read a novel or play golf. I won't speak a word because I don't use the phone. Sure I can get melancholy.'

I never had him figured as an emotional man. Isn't his whole shtick that you have to think not feel? 'Don't cry easily. Get close to crying then I stop it. A movie or a book will get me misty-eyed. It's always happy ending good stuff that gets me crying, not bad stuff.'

'Last time?' Long pause. 'Last time was when my little cat died. Five years old. Had a stroke. I had two cats and this one had the personality and almost humanlike behaviour. Pets are like sports: you think you can invest a lot in them without consequences.'

And like wives. He has been married three times, though he hasn't had any children. He met his current girlfriend, a West Palm Beach events planner, last year. When I ask about the ups and downs in his personal relationships he hesitates again. 'I would find myself very difficult to live with because I am totally self-contained and resent having to do things I don't want to do. Now I can choose. When I'm put in a position where I don't want to be there, I make sure everyone else is miserable.'

That's some confession, even for a thick-skinned man. He seems to know himself well, knows he can be selfish and that he cuts quite a lonely figure – just him and his remaining cat rattling around in that big house. He also knows he is easily bored. 'I don't have guests on my show because I don't care what other people think,' he tells me. 'Most guests are boring.' But it's not only others he is bored with, it is also, perhaps, himself. This may be what explains his recklessness, his bravado, his determination to say the unsayable. And perhaps it also explains why he never misses a beat, until you draw him out about himself — how he is difficult to live with, how he cried when his cat died, how, to his surprise, he found it helpful talking to a therapist. Only then does he hesitate. As we part he bets me a cigar from Desmond Sautter's of Mayfair that Obama won't win. I'd better go and choose one.

By THOMAS SOWELL | Posted Thursday, October 30, 2008 4:30 PM PT

Some elections are routine, some are important and some are historic. If Sen. John McCain wins this election, it will probably go down in history as routine. But if Sen. Barack Obama wins, it is more likely to be historic — and catastrophic.

Once the election is over, the glittering generalities of rhetoric and style will mean nothing. Everything will depend on performance in facing huge challenges, domestic and foreign.

Performance is where Barack Obama has nothing to show for his political career, either in Illinois or in Washington.

Policies that he proposes under the banner of "change" are almost all policies that have been tried repeatedly in other countries — and failed repeatedly in other countries.

Politicians telling businesses how to operate? That's been tried in countries around the world, especially during the second half of the 20th century. It has failed so often and so badly that even socialist and communist governments were freeing up their markets by the end of the century.

The economies of China and India began their takeoff into high rates of growth when they got rid of precisely the kinds of policies that Obama is advocating for the U.S. under the magic mantra of "change."

Putting restrictions on international trade in order to save jobs at home? That was tried here with the Hawley-Smoot tariff during the Great Depression.

Unemployment was 9% when that tariff was passed to save jobs, but unemployment went up instead of down, and reached 25% before the decade was over.

Higher taxes to "spread the wealth around," as Obama puts it? The idea of redistributing wealth has turned into the reality of redistributing poverty, in countries where wealth has fled and the production of new wealth has been stifled by a lack of incentives.

Economic disasters, however, may pale by comparison with the catastrophe of Iran with nuclear weapons. Glib rhetoric about Iran being "a small country," as Obama called it, will be a bitter irony for Americans who will have to live in the shadow of a nuclear threat that cannot be deterred, as that of the Soviet Union could be, by the threat of a nuclear counterattack.

Suicidal fanatics cannot be deterred. If they are willing to die and we are not, then we are at their mercy — and they have no mercy.

Moreover, once they get nuclear weapons, that is a situation which cannot be reversed, either in this generation or in generations to come.

Is this the legacy we wish to leave our children and grandchildren, by voting on the basis of style and symbolism, rather than substance?

If Barack Obama thinks that such a catastrophe can be avoided by sitting down and talking with the leaders of Iran, then he is repeating a fallacy that helped bring on World War II.

In a nuclear age, one country does not have to send troops to occupy another country in order to conquer it. A country is conquered if another country can dictate who rules it, as the Mongols once did with Russia, and as Osama bin Laden tried to do when he threatened retaliation against places in the United States that voted for George W. Bush. But he didn't have nuclear weapons to back up that threat — yet.

America has never been a conquered country, so it may be very hard for most Americans even to conceive what that can mean. After France was conquered in 1940, it was reduced to turning over some of its own innocent citizens to the Nazis to kill, just because those citizens were Jewish.

Do you think our leaders wouldn't do that? Not even if the alternative was to see New York and Los Angeles go up in mushroom clouds? If I were Jewish, I wouldn't bet my life on that.

What the Middle East fanatics want is not just our resources or even our lives, but our humiliation first, in whatever sadistic ways they can think of. Their lust for humiliation has already been repeatedly demonstrated in their videotaped beheadings that find such an eager market in the Middle East.

None of this can be prevented by glib talk, but only by character, courage and decisive actions — none of which Barack Obama has ever demonstrated.

    Given the uproar about the simple question asked you by Joe, the plumber, and the persecution that has been heaped on him because he dared to question you, I find myself motivated to say a few things to you myself.  While Joe aspires to start a business someday, I already have started not one, but 4 businesses.  But first, let me introduce myself.  You can call me 'Cory, the well driller'.   I am a 54-year-old high school graduate.  I didn't go to college like you, I was too ready to go 'conquer the world' when I finished high school.  25 years ago at age 29, I started my own water well drilling business at a time when the economy here in East Texas was in a tailspin from the crash of the early 80's oil boom.  I didn't get any help from the government, nor did I look for any.  I borrowed what I could from my sister, my uncle, and even the pawn shop and managed to scrape together a homemade drill rig and a few tools to do my first job.  My businesses did not start not a result of privilege.  It is the result of my personal drive, personal ambition, self discipline, self reliance, and a determination to treat my customers fairly.  From the very start my business provided one other (than myself) East Texan a full time job.  I couldn't afford a backhoe the first few years (something every well-drilling business had), so I and my helper had to dig the mud pits that are necessary for each and every job with hand shovels.  I had to use my 10-year-old, ½-ton pickup truck for my water tank truck (normally a job for at least a 2-ton truck). 

    A year and a half after I started the business, I scraped together a 20% down payment to get a modest bank loan and bought a 28-year-old, worn-out, slightly bigger drilling rig to allow me to drill the deeper water wells in my area.  I spent the next few years drilling wells with the rig while simultaneously rebuilding it between jobs.  Through these years, I never knew from one month to the next if I would have any work or be able to pay the bills.  I got behind on my income taxes one year, and spent the next two years paying that back (with penalty and interest) while keeping up with ongoing taxes.  I got behind on my water well supply bill 2 different years (way behind the second time... $80,000.00), and spent over a year paying it back (each time) while continuing to pay for ongoing supplies C.O.D. Of course, the personal stress endured through these experiences and years is hard to measure.  I do have a stent in my heart now to memorialize it all.

    I spent the next 10 years developing the reputation for being the most competent and most honest water well driller in East Texas .  2 years along the way, I hired another full-time employee for the drilling business so we could provide full-time water well pump service as well as the well drilling.  Also, 3 years along the path, I bought a water well screen service machine from a friend, starting business #2.  5 years later I made a business loan for $100,000.00 to build a new, higher production, computer controlled screen service machine.  I had designed the machine myself, and it didn't work out for 3 years so I had to make the loan payments without the benefit of any added income from the new machine.  No government program was there to help me with the payments, or to help me sleep at night as I lay awake wondering how I would solve my machine problems or pay my bills.  Finally, after 3 years, I got the screen machine working properly, and that provided another full-time job for an East Texan in the screen service business.  

    2 years after that, I made another business loan, this time for $250,000.00, to buy another used drilling rig and all the support equipment needed to run another, larger, drill rig.  This provided another 2 full-time jobs for East Texans.  Again, I spent a couple of years not knowing if I had made a smart move, or a move that would bankrupt me.  For the third time in 13 years, I had placed everything I owned on the line, risking everything, in order to build a business. 

    A couple of years into this, I came up with a bright idea for a new kind of mud pump, a fundamentally necessary pump used on water well drill rigs.  I spent my entire life savings to date (just $30,000.00), building a prototype of the pump and took it to the national water well convention to show it off.  Customers immediately started coming out of the woodwork to buy the pumps, but there was a problem.  I had depleted my assets making the prototype, and nobody would make me a business loan to start production of the new pumps.  With several deposits for pump orders in hand, and nowhere to go, I finally started applying for as many credit card as I could find and took cash withdrawals on these cards to the tune of over $150,000.00 (including modest loans from my dear sister and brother), to get this 3^rd business going. 

    Yes, once again, I had everything hanging on the line in an effort to start another business.  I had never manufactured anything, and I had to design and bring into production a complex hydraulic machine from an untested prototype to a reliable production model (in six months).  How many nights I lay awake wondering if I had just made the paramount mistake of my life, I cannot tell you, but there were plenty.  I managed to get the pumps into production, which immediately created another 2 full time jobs in East Texas .  Some of the models in the first year suffered from quality issues due to the poor workmanship of one of my key suppliers, so I and an employee (another East Texan employed) had to drive across the country to repair customers' pumps, practically from coast to coast.  I stood behind the product, and made payments to all the credit cards that had financed me (and my brother and sister).  I spent the next 5 years improving and refining the product, building a reputation for the pump and the company, working to get the pump into drill rig manufacturers' product lines, and paying back credit cards.  During all this time I continued to manage a growing water well business that was now operating 3 drill rig crews, and 2 well service crews.  Also, the screen service business continued to grow.  No government programs were there to help me, Mr. Obama, but that's okay, I didn't expect any, nor did I want any.  I was too busy fighting to make success happen to sit around waiting for the government to help me.     

    Now, we have been manufacturing the mud pumps for 7 years, my combined businesses employ 32 full time employees, and distributes $5,000,000.00 annually through the local economy.  Now, just 4 months ago I borrowed $1,254,000.00, purchasing computer-controlled machining equipment to start my 4th business, a production machine shop.  The machine shop will serve the mud pump company so that we can better manufacture our pumps that are being shipped worldwide.  Of course, the machine shop will also do work for outside companies as well.  This has already produced 2 more full time jobs, and 2 more should develop out of it in the next few months.  This should work out, but if it doesn't, it will be because you, and other professional politicians like yourself, will have destroyed our country's (and the world's) economy by meddling with mortgage loan programs through your liberal manipulation and intimidation of loaning institutions to make sure that unqualified borrowers could get mortgages. 

    You see, at the very time when I couldn't get a business loan to get my mud pumps into production, you were working with Acorn and the Community Reinvestment Act programs to make sure that unqualified borrowers could buy homes with no down payment, and even no credit, or worse yet, bad credit.....even the infamous, liberal, Ninja loans (No Income, No Job or Assets).  While these unqualified borrowers were enjoying unrealistically low interest rates, I was paying 22% to 24% interest on the credit cards that I had used to provide me the funds for the mud pump business that has created jobs for more East Texans.  It's funny, because after 25 years of turning almost every dime of extra money back into my businesses to grow them, it has been only in the last two years that I have finally made enough money to be able to put a little away for retirement, and now the value of that has dropped 40% because of the policies you and your ilk have perpetrated on our country. 

    You see, Mr. Obama, I'm the guy you intend to raise taxes on.  I'm the guy who has spent 25 years toiling and sweating, fretting and fighting, stressing and risking, to build a business and get ahead.  I'm the guy who has been on the very edge of bankruptcy more than a dozen times over the last 25 years, all the while creating more and more jobs for East Texans who didn't want to take a risk, and wouldn't demand from themselves what I have demanded from myself.  I'm the guy you characterize as 'the Americans who can afford it the most' that you believe should be taxed more to provide income redistribution 'to spread the wealth' to those who have never toiled, sweated, fretted, fought, stressed, or risked anything.   You want to characterize me as someone who has enjoyed a life of privilege and who needs to pay a higher percentage of my income than those who have bought into your entitlement culture.   

   I resent you, Mr. Obama, as I resent all who want to use class warfare as a tool to advance their political careers.  What's worse, each year more Americans buy into your liberal entitlement culture, and turn to the government for their hope of a better life instead of to themselves.  Liberals are succeeding through more than 40 years of collaborative effort between the predominantly liberal media and liberal indoctrination programs in the public school systems across our land.

    What is so terribly sad about this is this:  America was made great by people who embraced the one-time American culture of self-reliance, self-motivation, self-determination, self-discipline, personal betterment, hard work and risk-taking—a culture built around the concept that success was in reach for every able-bodied American who would strive for it.  Each year less Americans embrace that culture, we all descend together.  We descend down the socialist path that has brought country after country ultimately to bitter and unremarkable states.  If you and your liberal comrades in the media and school systems would spend half as much effort cultivating a culture of can-do across America as you do cultivating your entitlement culture, we could see Americans at large embracing the conviction that they can elevate themselves through personal betterment, personal achievement, and self-reliance.  You see, when people embrace such ideals, they act upon them.  When people act upon such ideals, they succeed.  America could find herself elevating instead of deteriorating.  But that would eliminate the need for liberal politicians, wouldn't it, Mr. Obama?  The country would not need you if the country was convinced that problem-solving was best left with individuals instead of the government.  You and all your liberal comrades have a vested interest in creating a dependent class in our country.  It is the very business of liberals to create an ever-expanding dependence on government.  What's remarkable is that you, who have never produced a job in your life, are going to tax me to take more of my money and give it to people who wouldn't need my money if they would get off their entitlement-mentality asses and apply themselves at work, demand more from themselves, and quit looking to liberal politicians to raise their station in life. 

You see, I know because I've had them work for me before.  Hundreds of them over these 25 years.  People who simply will not show up to work on time.  People who just will not work 5 days a week, much less 6.  People always looking for a way to expend less effort.  People who actually tell me that they would do more if I would first just pay them more.  People who take off work to sit in government offices applying to get free government handouts.  (Gee, I wonder how things would have turned out for them if they had spent that time earning money and pleasing their employer?)  You see, all of this comes from your entitlement-mentality culture. 

Oh, I know you will say I am uncompassionate.  Sorry, Mr. Obama, wrong again.  You see, I've seen what average percentage of your income has been given to charities over the years of 2000 to 2004 (ignoring the years you started running for office - can you pronounce the words "politically motivated"). You averaged less than 1% annually.  And your running mate, Joe Biden, averaged less than ¼% of his annual income in charitable contributions over the last 10 years.  Like so many liberals, the two of you want to give to the needy, just as long as it is someone else's money you are giving.  I won't say what I have given to charities over the last 25 years, but the percentage is several times more than you or Joe Biden! (Don't you just hate Google?).  Tell me again how you feel my pain.

In short, Mr. Obama, your political philosophies represent everything that is wrong with our country.  You represent the culture of government-dependence instead of self-reliance;  Entitlement mentality instead of personal achievement;  Penalization of the successful to reward the unmotivated;  Political correctness instead of open-mindedness and open debate.  If you are successful, you may preside over the final transformation of America from being the greatest and most self-reliant culture on earth, to just another country of whiners and wimps, who sit around looking to the government to solve their problems.  Like all of western Europe.  All countries on the decline.  All countries that, because of liberal, socialistic mentalities, have a little less to offer mankind every year.

God help us!

Alaska has not been developed; it’s been tested    and logged but barely exploited. Manmade Global Warming and Peak Oil are hoaxes used to lock up the keys to energy independence. Do you think any politician with any common sense would ever let a snail, polar bear or a fish kill our economy?

Oil prices are now going down, do you ever ask yourself why?

A few months ago we were running out of petroleum and the price was $147 a barrel. I am seeing financial reports in major world publications calling for $50 oil and you soon there's plenty of oil in other places than the US.

Thinking about what’s happening with our economy I cannot come to any other conclusion other than this was a set up. Think about it-$147 oil to kill the economy and $50 oil to kill off the dollar and the domestic energy business. The net result is more ominous than just $2 gasoline at the gas pump.

Our dollar is now near worthless. You will see the end game soon, regardless of who wins the presidential election.

I have capitulated, drill here –drill now and energy independence will never happen because our rulers don’t want it.

See who capitulates next.

Analysts at Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch are predicting that the price of crude oil could fall to $50 a barrel by December if the global economy slips into recession. Opec is due to meet this week and it is expected that the group will announce a cut in output.

The Gulf States will pull out of US Treasuries. The dollar will be almost worthless. Good bye 401K'S.Hello slavery.

By J.R. Dunn

"Over the past fifty years, something on the order of a half-million Americans have been killed by liberal policies."

...inflation is not only a frightening economic problem but is rapidly becoming Carter's most dangerous political liability as well... In the past few weeks, however, a new side of inflationary psychology has begun to show itself among businessmen and investors: plain, old-fashioned fear. Executives talk of inflation rates going to 20% or more in the next few months, creating an environment in which reasonable planning is impossible. The jitters have unhinged the investment markets. As recently as mid-February, stocks were widely considered a hedge against inflation and thought to be grossly undervalued. The Dow Jones industrial average hit a high of 904 on Feb. 13. But since then it has tumbled 92 points, to 812; nine points of the decline came last week. The average is now lower than it was 16 years ago.

A few days ago I received an email from a long time friend with a link to a Youtube video by Lindsey Williams. I watched his 8 part video from November 2007. He explained that Peak Oil is a hoax and Alaska has a 200 year supply of oil and gas for the US that’s being kept under wraps.

Then he said we would soon have $5 gasoline. Ok he’s lucky I thought.

Then Mr. Williams stated the Mortgage Crisis and the high price of oil would destroy the economy.

So, I looked at some more recent video post. These posts are from radio shows that I don’t listen to but heck, I believe he’s right on about peak oil and gas did go to $5 and the economy has taken a hard hit. I am no Ron Paul fan.

In late July while Oil prices were at their peak he said Oil will soon go to $50 a barrel ($2 gas)and that there are 2 huge oil fields that are coming on line that have more oil than the Middle East. One field is in Indonesia and the other is north of Russia, he continued.

If this happens the way Lindsey Williams suggest our domestic oil & gas exploration business will be destroyed in a few months, the countries of the Middle East will not be able to buy our Treasury Debt, the dollar’s value will be near worthless and our nation will not be able to service its debts. He said it will take us years to recover from this capitulation.

I pray he’s wrong. The scary thing is he’s been right too much for my comfort level. Oil prices are currently at $64 a barrel; weeks ago it was $140.

Glenn Beck calls this a perfect storm, Williams calls it an agenda. I hope it’s just Halloween.