RUSH: Yeah, I watched it. I didn’t want to watch it. I watched it because it’s my job. Now, oftentimes this is not a job. I love what I do, as you know. But it’s a job watching an Obama press conference. Yeah, I can hear people, ‘At least you have a job. Stop complaining.’ It was boring; it was professorial, and fewer Americans are watching. The numbers are coming in. Early ratings are down. Obama viewership weakens for press conference. The viewership declined from the previous press conference. It appears, ladies and gentlemen, the Obama show beginning to wear a little thin. By the way, greetings, it’s the Rush Limbaugh program, and this is the EIB here at the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies. Tell me what you think. Did you watch it, Snerdley? The only time Obama came alive, the only time he got excited and animated and passionate was saying he’s in love with the idea of cutting charitable donations. Man, he was excited about that.
You know what I also thought? We got the obligatory question from Chuck Todd, predictably from NBC. This question was so silly, the answer was so easy, and Obama failed to see that it was a hanging softball and knock it out of the park. The question that he got from Chuck Todd: ‘What about the notion of the American people sacrificing during this time? You have said that the economic situation we’re in is like a war. Well, where is the notion of sacrifice?’ I’m sitting there, and I can’t wait for this answer, because this is such a stupid question. What the hell is sacrifice when 600,000 Americans are losing their damn jobs every month? What the hell is sacrifice when their earned income is being eaten away by taxes and future spending? Sacrifice? The American people are more than sacrificing. The American people are paying a huge price for this. Sacrifice? What more does this government expect of the American people? Well, I’ll tell you, higher taxes. That 95% tax cut for 95% is off the table now, gone, off the table. In fact, Obama’s looking for new ways to raise taxes. You people in the 95%, it was always going to be the case, you were never going to get a tax cut, but now it’s official. Sacrifice? And he asked it twice.
I love the Drive-Bys last night after the press conference, ‘Ooh, he really connected on the sacrifice.’ He did not! He did not. ‘Well, the American people are trying to come up with ways to put their kids through colleges and so forth.’ The sacrifice the American people are making is this man’s presidency. We are all making sacrifices here. But what is this notion of sacrifice anyway? Where is it written in American exceptionalism that this is a nation built on sacrifice, economic sacrifice? Yeah, we have people who make sacrifices, the people that join the military and so forth. But, for crying out loud, sacrifice? You know the press asked Bush about that. Well, where’s the sacrifice during the war — sacrifice. What the hell is 8.1% unemployment? The American people are being made to sacrifice for this man’s presidency, and then he comes alive out there on this notion of cutting charitable deductions. It was an emotionally empty performance, but the high point, when the issue of cutting the legs out from under charities came up, and then right after that Obama gets this question — you know, he didn’t have any questions last night from the dean of the Drive-Bys, no Wall Street Journal, no New York Times, no Washington Post, no Los Angeles Times, some other big newspapers did not get questions.
Instead, some guy from Ebony magazine, which is a pop culture magazine. That’s like having somebody from People magazine in there. And this guy asked the strangest question, this bogus statistic that one out of 50 American children are homeless and what are you going to do about it. I want to see the facts on that, just like we had the two to three million people homeless during the late eighties and early nineties, Mitch Snyder and his bogus homeless numbers. I mean, that was obviously huge. A bogus discussion about homeless children just after Obama got animated about cutting charitable deductions. He got happy. So he’s happy, he can’t wait to cut the charitable deduction, it’s a question about one in 50 kids being homeless? If that were true, why would somebody want to cut charitable donations? I think a caring person would want to triple the deduction in order to reduce the bogus number of one in 50 children who are homeless and living under bridges. Would somebody tell me the last time you saw a kid sleeping under a bridge? I want to hear from somebody who’s seen it because that’s the way the question was framed out there.
Then of course we had the Ed Henry question on AIG, and Obama totally blew that. I got e-mails from people last night. This is so frustrating. I have to admit to you, ‘Rush, Rush, Rush, did you see the press was finally tough on Obama?’ I just sit there, and I get frustrated, and I want to shout back at these people, I want to call ’em up, not e-mail ’em, I want to call ’em, ‘What the hell are you thinking? The press got tough on Obama?’ Please, folks, would you stop. If you are one of these people, would you stop looking for validation in the wrong places. The press might have gotten tough on Obama, but I don’t know if you noticed, shortly after the press conference it was a hundred percent fawning. ‘He really, really answered those tough questions really well.’ Ed Henry with his question about why did it take you so long to respond to the AIG bonuses. So Obama goes through a wandering, meandering non-answer that’s very professorial, and Ed Henry says, ‘But you still didn’t answer the question, why did you wait?’ ‘I like to wait until I know what I’m talking about,’ and then there was laughter in the room. Now, the way I interpreted that at the moment I heard it, this guy is slicing and dicing Andrew Cuomo. Who was it that went out there immediately and started talking about AIG? Andrew Cuomo and everybody else, and Obama, ‘I’m smarter than these people.’ The fact of the matters is that even after he waited two days, he got it wrong. Even after two days he claimed he didn’t know what was going on.
They were lying left and right about AIG.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: By the way, on this charitable donation business, and President Obama’s glee and his energetic recitation of his plans to cut charitable donations; it might be prudent, ladies and gentlemen, for us to recall a Wall Street Journal op-ed January 22nd of this year. It was by Art Brooks. ‘Over the past several years, studies have consistently shown that people on the political right outperform those on the left when it comes to charity. This pattern appears to have held — increased, even — in 2008. In May of last year [2008], the Gallup polling organization asked 1,200 American adults about their giving patterns. People who called themselves ‘conservative’ or ‘very conservative’ made up 42% of the population surveyed, but gave 56% of the total charitable donations. In contrast, ‘liberal’ or ‘very liberal’ respondents were 29% of those polled but gave just 7% of donations. These disparities were not due to differences in income. People who said they were ‘very conservative’ gave 4.5% of their income to charity, on average; ‘conservatives’ gave 3.6%; ‘moderates’ gave 3%; ‘liberals’ gave 1.5%; and ‘very liberal’ folks gave 1.2%.’ So the reduction in the charitable donation deduction is just another hit at American conservatives.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Bloomberg News. Let’s not forget this. They ran the story in September of last year. That would be 2008. ‘Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama and his wife Michelle, gave $10,772 of the $1.2 million they earned from 2000 to 2004 to charities. That’s less than 1%, and that’s according to tax returns for those years released by the Obama campaign last September.’ So from 2000 to 2004, the Obamas gave less than 1% to charity. We did a big feature story on this in the Limbaugh Letter in the May 2008 issue on just who gives charitable donations, who are the largest givers in this country. And there’s no question that it’s self-identified conservatives who are. Chuck Todd wants to know from President Obama last night, ‘Are you asking the American people to sacrifice during any of this?’
IBM ‘is expected to inform a large number of US employees in its global-business services unit that their jobs are being eliminated, with the work of many of them being transferred to IBM employees in India … The planned cuts show that even companies that are successfully navigating the global recession are continuing to slash costs — some of them by taking advantage of cheaper Asian labor. … It couldn’t be determined how many people are losing their jobs in the IBM action. IBM typically avoids public disclosure of layoffs, and a spokesman declined comment on the plan,’ this from the Wall Street Journal today. So could we say that IBM employees are sacrificing during the Obama recession? A bunch of them are going to lose their jobs and they’re going to be outsourced to India.
I thought Obama was going to stop all of this, ladies and gentlemen! Remember all these companies, how bad they were going to get punished if they outsource, and how they were going to get rewarded if they stop outsourcing? And here’s IBM laying off American workers and transferring the jobs, or the work in those jobs, to India. And Chuck Todd has to ask the president of the United States if he’s asking the American people to sacrifice. I’m still stunned. That whole question-and-answer period last night, that segment just sent me for a loop. Asking the American people to sacrifice, in the midst of what they’re saying is the worst economy since the Great Depression?