RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen: The Messiah, Lord Barack Obama, the Most Merciful, was painting a wall today at a homeless shelter in the outer sectors of the nation’s capital. While painting the wall he took time-out to talk to the assembled multitudes.
OBAMA: Given the crisis that we’re in and hardships that so many people are goin’ through, we can’t allow any idle hands. Everybody’s gotta be involved. Everybody’s going to have to — everybody’s going to have to pitch in. And I think [the] American people are ready to do that. We’ve got 5,000, uh, volunteer organizations and service projects across the country today. Uh, the Internet is a[n] amazing tool for us to be able to organize people. We saw that in our campaign, but we don’t want to just use it for winning elections. We want to use it to rebuild America.
RUSH: (laughing) Man, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. This is… Folks, this is so bogus. Everybody’s going to have to pitch in? If everybody’s going to have to pitch, let the homeless kids paint their own walls. What’s wrong with that? You know, we want our kids to suffer so little these days that we have to do everything for them. Everybody’s going to have to pitch in? The American people are ready to do that? The people that have been pitching in are today’s targets. The people that have been pitching in, the people that make this country work are now the targets of the incoming Obama administration, and those who have not displayed any kind of pitching in or sharing in the responsibility are to be the recipients of this. Obama then continued.
OBAMA: If everybody did their job — whatever that job was — as well as that pilot did his job, we’d be in pretty good shape. So doing your job well, finishing your job, cooperating as a team, all that stuff’s important. I think I got this wall covered.
RUSH: He’s talking about painting there. ‘I think got this wall covered.’ Now, here’s the interesting point about this. Theoretically and philosophically, Obama is right on the money. If everybody did their job, whatever it was, as well as the pilot did (don’t forget the pilot for a moment). Doing your job well, finishing your job, cooperating — that’s exactly right! Finish what you start. If everybody did their job well… We’re back to this whole notion of responsibility. He’s saying it to the wrong people. When he says, ‘If everybody did their job well,’ he’s aiming this at the affluent, he’s aiming it at the achievers. By definition, they are doing their job well. But he’s not calling on those who aren’t doing their job well to do it well. What he’s going to do is placate them. He’s going to turn them into wards of the state. He is going to see to it that they forever look to him to come paint their wall — euphemistically, symbolically.
Make no mistake about this. By the way, responsibility? We must all exhibit responsibility. Ladies and gentlemen, the country is in the middle of ‘the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression,’ supposedly. I don’t necessarily… I don’t believe that yet. I don’t think that’s the case. It may get there, but it isn’t now. We haven’t approached the malaise of the Jimmy Carter seventies yet. However, let’s just go with the premise here of the Drive-By Media that this is ‘the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.’ That’s not stopping rich donors and the government from spending $170 million or more on the immaculation. The actual swearing-in ceremony will cost $1-1/4 million, according to Carole Floorman, spokeswoman for the joint congressional committee on immaculation ceremonies.
It’s the security. It’s the parties. It’s the countless Port-A-Potty rentals that really run up the bill. I mean, folks, this is indeed ‘the largest temporary bathroom event in the history of the United States.’ The federal government estimates it’s going to spend roughly $49 million on immaculation weekend. Washington, Virginia, and Maryland have requested another $75 million from the feds to help pay for their share of police, fire, and medical services. Then there’s the party bill. ‘We have budget of roughly $45 million, maybe a little more,’ said Linda Douglass, former Drive-By Mediaette and spokesbabe for the inaugural committee. One hundred seventy million? Is that responsible? One hundred seventy million! It’s the most expensive immaculation in the history of the country, in the midst of ‘the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.’
Now, the Obama apologists are saying, ‘Well, this is necessary to raise people’s spirits, to lift their hearts.’ Wait a second. I thought that had already been done with the election of The Messiah. The Bush inauguration in 2004 cost less than half this, maybe one-third of what this cost; and back then, the Drive-Bys were running stories… There she is. There she is. Look, Snerdley. Look! What did I just say? Look at PMSNBC. What did I just say during the break? God, do I know these people? Sometimes it’s scary. Speaking of the parties here, I read during show prep today that Barack and Michelle Obama have told their social secretaries, don’t book ’em at home at night. They’re not going to be sitting at home most of the time helping the kids with the homework; they are out there socializing. They’re going to be partying. They come from a new generation. They’re going to be booked.
They’re going to be out dancing. They’re going to be rock ‘n’ rolling. They’re going to be jazzing. They’re going to be doing poetry and all that, and I said, ‘You know what? I doubt Sally Quinn’s had an orgasm in the last eight years, but she probably had ten of them since she read that Obama is going to start throwing parties,’ because she’s a social doyenne. Her dinner parties back during the glory days of the… Well, not the Kennedys, certainly the Clintons and so forth, even part in the Reagan administration were legendary and people would do anything to get an invitation to them. Now, ladies and gentlemen, people are caught up in this, and as I said at the top of the program, I’m about to make a mess. I’m about to step in a big mess here by not following, as Newt Gingrich did, the template.
You would have thought Newt Gingrich was John McCain on steroids today, listening to him praise Barack Obama. But I think what’s going on here is really, really very dangerous. Just between us, folks. Don’t tell anybody about this. We’ll just keep it between us. I think it’s very dangerous. What the Obama people are doing — look at me now. Listen to this. The Obama people are orchestrating as much doom and gloom as possible. It is all about creating Obama as the great savior. This is all-purposeful. This is being done on purpose: the comparisons to great American leaders, the constant claim of starting anew. And, of course, all you have to do is look at this ABC story on the inauguration: ‘Worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.’ Axelrod saying, ‘Hey, it’s going to take years, not months, to get this fixed.’ ‘It’s going to get worse,’ Obama says. We don’t know how bad it’s going to get. It’s gonna get really bad out there. It’s going to get so bad; I may run out of paint necessary to paint all the homeless shelters. I mean, it may take ’til his first term is over to turn this around. Now, this is all done to just orchestrate as much doom and gloom as possible. Obama is like any other politician. He’s a politician. And what’s happening here is politics disguised as the Pope’s arrival. It’s disguised as something reverential here. One man cannot save anything as large as our country. We don’t need saving anyway! This is the thing that really bothers me. We don’t need saving. But one man can do enormous damage.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: The last man standing. I, El Rushbo, Sunday morning, C-SPAN’s Washington Journal. The host, Steve Scully, interview Mike Allen of The Politico. Steve Scully said to Mike Allen of The Politico, ‘What is the role of people like Rush Limbaugh in the next four years?’
ALLEN: We thought that they were going to have fantastic success. Rush Limbaugh built his amazing success as the most listened to person in America during the Clinton years, and typically it’s been better for these more partisan groups to be on the outside. But they have a needled thread in that they are very much, at least in public opinion polls, a minority view at the moment. Their trick is to find a way to keep their audience, to be entertaining and engaging, and yet not be out of step with the vast majority of Americans, who are rooting for this president. Uh, the question is whether they will be able to thread the needle, uh, of standing up for their principles, of holding this White House to account — which both the press and the commentary needs to do, uh — and remain in step with a country that wants changes, wants to give Barack Obama a chance.
RUSH: You know, he’s a nice guy, but he just doesn’t understand the nature of my success, how it happened, when it happened. He doesn’t understand when it happened. It didn’t happen under Clinton, it happened before that. But he certainly doesn’t understand his own role. Near the end of the sound bite here, he says, speaking of people like me, ladies and gentlemen, ‘The question is whether they will be able to thread the needle of standing up for their principles of holding this White House to account which both press and the commentary needs to do and remain in step with a country that wants changes.’ Mr. Allen, your side has not exhibited one bit of energy aimed at holding the White House to account. Quite the contrary. I’ve seen a couple of Drive-By journalists actually lament on the air that they might be ‘pressured’ into being critical.
They might be pressured into being suspicious, as they normally are, of anybody else with this kind of power. That they are uncomfortable having to hold this White House to account. The reason why this program’s audience is going to skyrocket is because we’re going to be the only ones doing this. We’re going to be the only ones not in the tank. We’re going to be the only ones that have not throw in the towel of responsibility and objectivity. We’re the ones that have not joined the comet, the cult, the ones not heading to the Hale-Bopp comet! Because I guarantee you, if Obama tells you he’s going there, Mr. Allen, you’ll probably try to find the next ship on the way out. I think it’s time to introduce a word to describe Obama, and that word is ‘arrogant.’ I know I have to be careful here. I know I’m well on the way to making a mess for myself, or stepping into one.
But I have noticed that the white news anchors and commentators, who are most of them, have become incoherent in how they’re reporting all of this. They’re incoherent. There’s nothing objective. There’s nothing mature. It is pure psychobabble hero cult worship. They’re trying to outdo each other to see who can be the most loyal, celebratory, wax the most eloquent about the lofty descriptions of the personality and personage of Barack Obama. On the one hand, they speak of how historic this occasion is because the American people elected a black man as president. But they won’t come out and say that they’re amazed by this because they believe the American people are racist. They’re ecstatic that they have caused (in their own minds) this historic election to take place and this historic immaculation to take place. Believe me, the Drive-Bys think they made this happen. That’s why they’re totally invested in this, which is why Obama is too big to fail, Mr. Allen — and I love you. I love the work you do.
Politico does some good stuff. But you guys are so in the tank, he’s too big to fail. You will not allow him to fail because you’d have to take yourselves down with him since you have put him on this pedestal that is 50 miles above everybody else. You cannot allow anything to take that pedestal down with him on it, and you won’t. But there will be those out there who will, who are not personality-affected by this. We’re not groupies. That’s the best way to describe it. The Drive-By Media have become groupies for Obama and all of the things that they have made up that attach themselves to them. The American people were not racist before the election. The American people are not racist now. I’m not sure how many Americans are caught up in this whole notion. Fifty-five million people voted against Obama. I don’t know where the notion got started that 80% of the country is excited and can’t wait and doesn’t want the president to fail, wishes him success and all this sort of stuff.
There are so many assumptions — like three million homeless way back when, so many assumptions — that they are simply unquantifiable. You know, anybody can point to anecdote, ladies and gentlemen, to claim whatever they want. But the fact is, this country is the most tolerant society on the face of the earth, which explains one reason why people flee here from every corner of the earth. But the Drive-By Media, the American left have it in their heads that this is still the antebellum slavery days that, that it may as well be the 1860s or it may as well be the 1960s with Bull Connor still running around out there. They have lost all perspective. They have lost all responsibility. These white anchors and commentators are now fully revealing their political agendas, which for decades they denied when the insist… This is their agenda. When they insist that we all get behind Obama, only for one reason, ’cause he’s black? Well, maybe there’s another reason, because he’s not George W. Bush?
Like I said numerous times, Obama’s historic election is behind me now. I’m speaking to you personally, from the heart. I don’t see black people when I look at people. I don’t see women. I don’t see groups of people. I see Americans. When I look at Obama, I see my president. I see a man who’s in charge of this country for the next four years. I care very deeply what he intends to do. I care what his policies are. I’m not going to give him a pass because he represents some sordid past of our country and as such he gets free rein to do what he wants while we say nothing because we ‘owe’ this to him, based on our original sin of slavery. Sorry, it doesn’t work that way here behind the Golden EIB Microphone or in a lot of other places.
He’s the president. He has policies. I know what they are. I’ve studied ’em. I have every bit of understanding I can on where he wants to take this country. I don’t want to go there! I don’t want this to become a western European socialist country, and it’s going to. If we get socialized medicine, if we get national health care — as my friend Pete Wehner wrote last week in the Wall Street Journal with Paul Ryan — it’s over. That’s the end of the country as we know it. Do you realize…? Here’s the point they made. We get national health care. From that point on, there’s no reversing it. You create that kind of dependency in people, and there will be no reversing that. There will be calls for adding more to the whole concept of the government should do everything. Why should we get behind Obama, especially if he urges policies that we reject? Why should we do this? What is the point?
What do we gain by this? All we gain is what the left has been trying to do to us for years and that’s silence ourselves. Okay, so we shut ourselves up. Do you think we’re going to get praised for this? Do you think we’re going to be credited, you think we’re going to be brought into the tent, you think we’re going to be brought into the, quote, unquote, ‘big clique’? Hell no. If they can’t shut us up, the best thing they can do is intimidate us into shutting ourselves up, and I, frankly, am not interested. They say everybody wants him to succeed. Why’s that? Did everybody want Bush or Clinton or Reagan to succeed? Can somebody go back in American history and tell me when we had a president that everybody wanted to succeed? I’m not even sure every American wanted George Washington to succeed. There are a lot of people that were not quite happy about the way that was all going down.
The idea that all of a sudden just from… What reason? You tell me. What reason must we all shut up and hope Obama succeeds, especially when he has policy ideas that I reject? He’s not a ‘black’ president. He’s not ‘the first black president’ to me. That’s done. That’s the past. Well, it will be after tomorrow. That’s no justification for engaging in errors and making mistakes and doing the wrong things while people shut up simply because of the historic nature here. We want him to succeed because he’s the first black president? If that’s the case, then who’s suspending reason and acting out their own racism? The racism here is on the left! (Man, am I making a mess today.) But it is. Everything we’re doing here, we’re supposed to do because of race. He’s the first black president, so we’re to shut up and we’re to root for him? We’re going to say we hope he has a successful presidency.
‘Well, everybody wants him to succeed.’ Well, no. And it isn’t based on race! As it always is, the racial element or component in all of this is being injected by the Drive-By Media. A president is to be supported or opposed, whichever is the case, based on what he stands for, what his policies are and so forth. Not his race. Why should anyone want a president to succeed if his positions are considered damaging to the economy and national security? And, by the way, who are the true classical liberals now? Who is it that’s obsessed with race, as opposed to being colorblind and addressing issues based on their substance? We’re not getting any substance in terms of reporting about Barack Obama at all because the left and the media are obsessed with the racial component, while they claim they’re the ones who are colorblind.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Look, another point of hypocrisy that I wish to add here as a means of illustrating what’s going on. Remember when Justice Thomas, Clarence Thomas, was nominated as only the second black man to the Supreme Court, he was trashed. They tried to kill him. They tried to destroy him simply because his views did not comport with those of the liberals. Did you ever hear the media say, ‘We need to get behind Clarence Thomas; we all want Clarence Thomas to succeed because of the symbolism behind his appointment?’ No. You heard that he was unqualified, that he was over his head, that he hadn’t accomplished much in his life, and then they sent out the character assassins to try and derail his nomination, and this guy had a record of performance. But now we’re supposed to set all this aside and just blindly say, ‘Oh, yes, I hope he succeeds.’ So it clearly is only historic when the minority is a liberal, and we should only unite behind the person if it advances the liberal agenda.
Now, as an aside, ladies and gentlemen, I think it’s worth underscoring Obama’s constant attempt to persuade you that he’s somebody else, that he’s not himself. Even if I say so myself, this is a profundity, Wendy, this is a profound point. I think you need to pay special attention to Obama’s constant attempt to persuade you that he’s somebody else, not who he is. It’s one thing for a candidate, or a president, to draw on past great presidents to advance a point or an agenda, but it’s something weird, it’s just creepy — and by the way, Newsweek magazine, two guys described Obama as ‘creepy,’ remember? It was creepy. You know when it was, Snerdley? It was at his acceptance speech in Grant Park in Chicago, there was something creepy about Obama. He ascends to look over us after he speaks, was the way these Newsweek guys described Obama, as creepy. Well, I’m telling you, I have to agree with the Newsweek guys. It is creepy when that candidate, or the president, tries to persuade you that he actually is that past great president, which is what yesterday was all about.
He is Abraham Lincoln. It is very, very creepy. And even on the way outta office, they just can’t stop trashing Bush. We’re supposed to get behind Obama even when we disagree with him, but they are free to continue to trash Bush when he was elected and when he is leaving office. And they call people Obama naysayers. Well, I think there’s some Limbaugh naysayers out there, the people attacking me, and there will be even more Limbaugh naysayers out there. I’m still waiting for Obama to tell us how the government is going to sacrifice, folks. Everybody else is supposed to sacrifice, but the government’s not. It’s employing more people, it’s spending more money, it’s printing more money. The government isn’t going to sacrifice here at all. PMSNBC, they are wondering over there if — this is Saturday morning — they’re wondering if Obama can win over the Last Man Standing.
BUCHANAN: I’ll tell you, I will really be impressed when I see Rush Limbaugh walking through a receiving line in Barack Obama’s White House.
HALL: Right. Right. Did you — did you take too much of Mika’s Ambien last night, Pat? Because that’s probably not going to happen, and I’m just going to get that out there. He’ll probably slam me, but I — I don’t know. Let me ask you this, Pat, beyond Rush Limbaugh, Mr. Limbaugh, isn’t it to the advantage of the conservatives also to reach out?
RUSH: I didn’t hear the answer, but this, again, you know, Buchanan, look, he’s got a point, they’re all sitting there laughing, and they know. We had this conservative dinner last week and I asked the pointed question, ‘Does anybody think that Barack Obama actually showed up at George Will’s house to have his mind changed? Do you think that’s why he went?’ And what Buchanan is saying, ‘Look, I’ll believe this conservative outreach if I see Rush Limbaugh walking in the White House.’ And of course the Drive-By Mediaette here, Tamron Hall, ‘Oh, that will never happen.’ Well, she’s admitting there’s no conservative outreach. There’s establishment media with pseudo-conservative outreach. But there’s no conservative outreach. We wouldn’t expect there to be. I don’t expect for Obama to come to me and give me a chance to change his mind. I’m sure as hell don’t think he — well, his arrogance, he might think he can change mine. But he’s not going to try. He doesn’t have to. He’s going to have more problems with people on his side anyway, just mark my words. So they’re admitting, the Drive-Bys are admitting that all this reaching out is just symbolism, pure phoniness, 100 percent.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Back to the audio sound bites. This morning on the BBC World Service, the host, Gavin Esler, spoke with Michael Goldfarb of Global Watch about health care and the Obama presidency, and the presenter at the BBC World Service said, ‘Health care, as you know, it’s 15% of the American GDP. Obama is committed to reforming that.’
GOLDFARB: Obama’s presidency isn’t going to end the right-wing propaganda that comes over the radio, the Rush Limbaugh stuff. I mean this is quite hair-raising, ignorant stuff. So when he comes forward with the health care plan, there — there’s a built-in attack machine that isn’t going away that is outside of the political party of the Republicans.
RUSH: (laughing) The last part’s true, except it’s the Republicans that have abandoned us. But this is all the theme of Last Man Standing. This guy from Britain, where they have a failed national health care system, and this program is on the air in Britain, when he comes forward, ‘Right-wing propaganda, the Rush Limbaugh stuff,’ let’s see, what did he say here? ‘Hair-raising, ignorant stuff, when he comes forward with a health care plan, there’s a built-in attack machine that isn’t going away, is quite hair-raising, ignorant stuff.’ I am considered to be ignorant by GlobalWatch.com’s Michael Goldfarb. So then, Gavin Esler says, ‘You can already write what they’re going to say. This will take your health care away from you,’ blah, blah, blah.
GOLDFARB: What happened with Hillary Clinton, just going back, and — and one fears that — that it will get — become a legislative process rather than you and I, Adam, and — and everyone who said, you know, health care is a right. We should be able to get health care and not worry about whether we can pay for it, take it out my tax money, we’ll have a health care system, force me to buy insurance to top it up, I don’t care. In America, they don’t think of it is a right, they think of it as an option. And it will allow Rush Limbaugh and the rest to think, okay, socialism is coming to America, and we’re not a socialist country.
RUSH: For that, I’m ignorant. For that, the Brits look at me as ignorant. I’m proud to be ignorant if I’m that way.