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RUSH: Well, I guess we learned last night that President Obama did listen to Reverend Wright those 20 years. The only time he acted interested in being there was the last question of the night when he got to talk about race and profiling. That’s when Barack Obama came alive last night. Greetings, my friends. Here is the phone number. I, of course am Rush Limbaugh with talent on loan from God. Brian, did you guys mess with the Dittocam today? Did you take that out? Well, no, no, it’s fine, but the zoom is all off, I mean it’s like the camera is closer, far, whatever.

I did an interview this morning with Greta Van Susteren. It went for an hour, and we’re right here in the studio. It’s going to air in two parts tonight and tomorrow and I understand they’re already promo’ing as ‘Rush Unleashed.’ (interruption) Yeah, well, I never do. I’ve told you this before. When I finish a TV interview, I never think it’s good. So we’ll just have to wait and see. When am I ever leashed? That’s a good point. But yeah, it was fun. It went on and on and on, and she might have asked me three questions. I pretended that I was doing an Obama press conference. And, you know, his first answer last night was ten minutes. I clocked it; I predicted it; it was ten minutes. He filibustered. We’ll talk about this in great detail, but I’m telling you when he got that question at the end of the press conference on what happened to the Harvard professor, whew, came alive. Got animated, got passionate, and then said some really dumb things. After admitting he didn’t know all the facts, after admitting that he’s biased because he knows the professor, he then called the Cambridge police stupid! Cambridge is a bunch of liberals, liberal mayor, a liberal professor, liberal college, liberal cops. How can there be such racism? I mean the idyllic, quaint liberal setting, how can there be such racism?

He couldn’t wait to talk about profiling. He couldn’t wait to talk about the plight of the black man after admitting he didn’t know what even went on in there, he didn’t have all the details. Presidents of the United States do not descend to discussing such incidents, local police arrest charges filed and then dropped. We, ladies and gentlemen, are in the middle of a major offensive in Afghanistan. We are in the middle of our economy being destroyed purposely, and I made that point with Greta tonight, numerous times. I did not hold back. I did not hold back. And she asked about the ‘fail’ business again. I said, ‘Too late, I tried to stop it, but he’s already failed.’ Do you think the stimulus is working? Are there any jobs being created? What’s Obama done for anybody? ‘I know, I know, but I hope that it will eventually work.’ It can’t work, this is my point, Greta, it can’t work, it’s not designed to work the way you think it’s working. It’s designed to work the way it is working, it’s designed to kill jobs, have people lose their health insurance so they start clamoring for his signature program. I was on fire, folks. I was on fire out there.

I haven’t found one positive review. I haven’t read the liberal blogs, but I haven’t found one positive review of the press conference. Even the New York Times has a fact-check story today that is devastating to Obama. The Politico last night filed a story excoriating the lame White House press corps for absurd, pointless questions. Howard Fineman excoriates the White House press corps today for much the same reason. I can’t find one positive review of this press conference among Obama supporters, not even on MSNBC. I can’t find one. Now, as I said, didn’t look at the blogs. All of the people friendly to Obama are saying, ‘Why did he do this? He didn’t give us anything new; he didn’t sell anything; he didn’t give us any heartwarming story. It was a total waste of time.’ It was not a waste of time. We learned more about Barack Obama in that press conference last night than anything else he has ever said. That was a series of teachable moments last night. I hope he has a press conference like this every week. He was rambling. He was incoherent; he was listless; he was lifeless; it was laborious; it was professorial; it was chock-full of some of the most blatant lies a president has told the country or the press corps, and he was not called on one of them.

State-Run Media did not pull any information from him. They were disgraceful lapdogs. I said yesterday that they have met their Waterloo and it’s Obama. They have given up their integrity, they have given up their professionalism, they have given up whatever the sterling qualities of journalism are, they have abandoned them in exchange for being stenographers for Rahm Emanuel and propagandists for the Obama administration. Anybody saying that press conference was a waste of time is either emotionally invested in Obama or misses the point. We found out last night so many things. We find out just how fired up about race he remains. I don’t know if you’re a doctor, pediatrician, we also learned last night that Barack Obama thinks that you purposely, unnecessarily take out kids’ tonsils to line your pockets. He gave a specific example. Your kid, your child, sore throat, repeated sore throat, you go to the pediatrician, you go to the doctor, and the doctor says, ‘Well, it could be allergies, it could be this, it could be that,’ and then he looks at the fee reimbursement schedule and he sees there’s a lot of money in a tonsillectomy, predatory tonsillectomy.

So he takes the tonsils out when it may not be necessary. We’re going to tighten down on this. We’re going to make it more efficient. If the tonsils don’t need to come out we’re not going to have the tonsils come out. Now, pediatricians for the most part are not the surgeons. If a pediatrician says a kid needs the tonsils out, go to hospital, the surgeon does it. So what’s going to happen, the pediatrician is going to get a kickback from the surgeon? Do you realize, folks, to sit there and accuse doctors? Look, I’m sure doctors do a lot of unnecessary stuff, but they’re not doing it to line their pockets, they’re doing it to protect themselves against tort lawsuits. (interruption) How am I confusing you? No, he did not say the government wasn’t going to be involved. Whatever he said last night, none of it was true, none of it. He said he’s a deficit reducer. He said our economy is growing. We’re back from the brink. He said he’s cut deficit spending. He doesn’t like government. And none of it was true, Snerdley. It was blatant. It was breathtaking to watch this. It was so eye-opening.

Not one question about the CBO numbers. Not one question about any of the independent analysis of the plan that refutes everything he said. And he offered nothing new, he gave no details, and there’s a reason for this. His buddies in the press are upset he didn’t give any details. There are stories, the Democrats in the House are upset he’s not giving any details. He’s not telling us what he wants. That’s strategic ’cause it isn’t about health care. It’s not about health care. It’s not about health insurance. Oh! And strange as it could be. We started talking about health insurance reform yesterday, and all of a sudden here comes the term last night, ‘health insurance reform.’ Now, most people think this is all about their health care. It ain’t, folks, because you can’t insure your health. This is about health insurance. After insulting doctors — I’m telling you, this is big. This went by a lot of the immediate analysis last night because there are people studying and looking at other things. But he accused doctors of performing unnecessary organ removal for money.

Now, you talk to any doctor, there’s no money in Medicare reimbursement, Medicaid reimbursement anyway, but doctors, they do do a lot of unnecessary things, like all these tests, which Obama said we’re not going to do anymore, we’re not going to have these tests, we’re gonna make it more efficient. You know why they do all those tests? So they don’t get sued into bankruptcy by Democrat tort lawyers accusing them of malpractice or misdiagnosis of something. That’s why they do a lot of unnecessary things. You want to cut a lot of money out of the health care problem just have serious health care tort reform. He kept talking about we spend $6,000 more per person than other advanced countries on health care. He’s gonna lower that number by making sure there aren’t any unnecessary tonsillectomies and unnecessary tests and maybe take the red pill instead of the blue pill.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have the best medical health care in the world. No one leaves this country, no one takes their children out of this country for health care. Everywhere else around the world they come here. Now, the best costs things. Barack Obama has spent more than $6,000 per person by a factor of a gazillion on his stimulus package. He wants to talk about waste and fraud in health care. We haven’t seen anything ’til he gets his mitts on it. There was one other thing that he did that I really was questioning, ‘Did he mean to do this? I know he thinks it but did he mean to say this?’ After he started accusing doctors of doing unnecessary organ removals for money, he then started ragging on the insurance companies, started beating them up, ‘Have you seen their profits lately, have you seen their profits? That’s not right, this economy, profits too high. I will squeeze those profits.’ He admitted that he’s going to go after private insurance company profits.

Well, folks, that was a tantamount admission that you are not going to have private insurance options because if he goes after and succeeds in killing their profit, there’s no way they can stay in business. Profit is the incentive. Pediatricians largely become pediatricians because they’ve got a thing for kids, they like kids. They don’t go into it to do unnecessary organ removal operations. This guy has such a resentment for success and for achievers. But he admits he’s gonna go after the profit of the private insurance companies. That’s none of his damn business. He’s gonna regulate, they’re going to have to provide coverage for preexisting conditions, they’re going to have to insure you even if you’re a day away from dying. He’s going to kill ’em off and therefore the public option will be the only option, which, anybody that’s looked at the plan in the House knows that that’s the plan anyway. And he’s up there lying through his teeth about that last night, all day yesterday, every day this week that he’s spoken about it.

So this press conference was hardly a waste of time. It was far from a waste of time. This was valuable. I don’t think a lot of people watched it ’cause it was tough sledding. It was laborious. As I say, it was not inspiring, it was not motivating; it was not good salesmanship. But for the inside-the-Beltway DC types that dig somebody that sounds smart and informed and educated on the issues, I’m sure it was a home run. But there was no new information here to counter any of the charges against the program. Now, there’s a reason why there are no details. There’s a reason, and the reason is strategic. It’s not just that it isn’t about health care. It’s about regulating human behavior in every aspect of life. That’s what they’re seeking here. But there’s another aspect that’s strategic. Remember Tom Daschle was the first guy that was going to head up this plan until they found he hadn’t paid his taxes. Daschle’s advice, I’ll give you greater details, forget the details, the reason the Clintons failed is they got too detailed, detailed — just stick with the broad themes, we’re going to get killed if we go into details.

Well, Obama’s aborting details, specific details to the point he won’t refute charges that are specific about what his plan contains. Meanwhile the House Democrats, ‘We need to know more of what he wants here. We’re flying on our own here,’ and they don’t like it. They want this to be a communal effort. But he’s not going to give details ’cause it ain’t about details. He thinks the details will kill it. And he’s right. Fifty-three percent disapprove of the plan. More and more people who find out what’s in it want no part of it. You’ve heard this number 47 million uninsured? Of course now they can say, what, 56 million uninsured with all these job losses? That’s another reason for having unemployment to raise the number of people that don’t have insurance. We’re compassionate people. But do you realize that 90% of the American people have health coverage? Doesn’t that sorta put that 47 million figure in a different perspective when you point out 90% of the country has health insurance, in the country with the best health care in the world?

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Okay, last week we saw white firefighters under assault by agents of Barack Obama and Sonia Sotomayor. I’m talking about Frank Ricci and the boys from New Haven. They were under assault during the Sotomayor confirmation hearings. You remember that. Groups went out there trying to destroy these guys. Now white policemen are under assault from the East Room of the White House by the president of the United States, after admitting he didn’t know all the facts of what went on in there. But the cops acted stupidly. Even Gates admitted that the cop probably voted for Obama. You got Harvard, you got Cambridge here. Well, I haven’t seen this much racism in a liberal enclave since the Duke lacrosse case. Here you have the idyllic perfect liberal setting: nothing but elites and future elites at the university, the citadel of ideas, and all this racism is going on!

Henry Louis Gates is thought of as a criminal because he is black and breaking into his own house. You know what? If I’m Henry Louis Gates, I’m thanking my neighbor for looking out for me. The neighbor called the cops. She thought somebody was getting in. She didn’t know who — the neighbor, I don’t know if it’s a he or she. Now, the cops show up, Gates proves that he’s the owner of the house, and yet they arrest him. Now, something went on in there that we don’t know about. Something had to go on in there that we don’t know about — and Obama clearly doesn’t know what went on. So racial matters. And of course with president of the United States going on and on and on about profiling, and how we gotta work on that. We need a federal program on profiling. We’re going to be working on it. I’m telling you, that’s the only time last night he was jazzed.

The only time last night he was fired up and on fire, passionate and so forth is when that question came. He also kept saying last night about health care, ‘This is not personal to me. It’s not personal.’ Well, you know something, folks, it is personal to me. The president says his proposal’s not about him. Well, it is about me, and it’s about you and tens of millions of people like you, who are going to be forced into more expensive private insurance options or onto a public plan or fined for not having insurance. You don’t get fined for not having insurance if you don’t own a car. You’re going to get fined here. I think it is pretty damn personal what they’re doing. The problem is that Obama and the Democrats failed to make it personal. They’re making it ideological and they’re relying on Obama’s image and cult-like appeal to sell this, and those days are over on this, ’cause nothing he’s doing is working. Nothing he’s doing for anybody is helping anybody. It’s not about him? Well, it’s personal for a whole lot of us.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: You know, folks, as I listened to President Obama last night throwing around completely made-up numbers, completely fabricated projections… He was telling us he’s a deficit reducer, that he doesn’t like big-government spending and we’re going to fix all these problems by reforming health care — and that he’s creating jobs. He said he’s creating jobs! We got more unexpected job losses reported this morning. But we come back from the brink, from the economy. So I’m listening to him throw these completely fabricated numbers and projections all over the place last night. The CBO, the Congressional Budget Office — run by Democrats — skewers everything when he puts these numbers out, and do you know what else? The CBO, theoretically it’s independent. The CBO, the Congressional Budget Office, reports to Congress. Guess who Obama summoned to the White House this week? The head honcho of the CBO. That’s not cool.

Now, the CBO’s got these numbers that show everything Obama is saying is not true. They’re saying, ‘In the first year the deficit will have $240 billion added to it,’ and that’s probably low. So Obama calls the guy up there, you think just to have hundred-dollar Kobe beef or did he and Rahm Emanuel get in the guy’s face and say, ‘What are you doing to us?’ These are authoritarians. Anyways, I’m watching this and I’m listening to all these lies (and that’s what they were) tossed around, and I decided since he can’t count on the CBO… Well, we’ll see but it doesn’t look like he can control ’em. He needs to create a new agency that will counter the CBO, he needs to come up with his own version of the CBO, a White House agency that will analyze congressional budgets and legislation and produce a result that Obama wants — and I have the name for this new agency.

The Office of Imaginary Information: O.I.I. The Office of Imaginary Information. He can cite whatever that O.I.I. group puts out to back up all of his statistics and claims. The Office of Imaginary Information. That’s what the Oval Office has already become. He may as well just set up his own agency to counter the CBO, they’ll call it O.I.I., and they’ll report whatever he wants to discredit the CBO. The Office of Imaginary Information. O.I.I. Now, this detail business. I want to explain something to you. When he was still president-elect (you gotta remember this) I personally warned you people what was coming with health care reform, ’cause we’ve been there once. Obama’s point man then on health issues was the Puffster, the former Senate majority leader and soon to be discovered tax cheat, Tom Daschle. In December… I told you, we could go back and get the tape if we wanted to, but in December I told you the strategery that Daschle advised Obama to implement.

Daschle was convinced that the reason Clinton blew it was because it was too detailed. It took too long to debate it in Congress. He urged Obama to go on offense immediately while he had post-election goodwill. But the big key to a successful government takeover of health care was keeping you in the dark, and that’s why ‘no details’ was part of the strategery. Daschle actually said: ‘Details kill. If we get too far into the weeds, if we produce a 1,500- or 1,600-page bill, we’re going to get hung up on all the details and we’re never going to get to the principles.” Finally, Daschle said, ‘Once Congress does take up a health plan, it also can’t divert attention to other subjects, he said. ‘Let’s not put it down, let it lie there for months and months and figure out a time when we can get back to it later,’ Daschle said…’ He wanted to lead with it. They led with the Porkulus.

Anyway, there you have the Obama health care playbook and we see it being implemented. Ram it through, few details, demand that Congress act quickly with no breaks. The only thing Obama didn’t plan for was being ‘caught in the weeds,’ and he got caught in the weeds, as Daschle predicted, when you learn the details of what is in this bill. It’s not good for Obama to go into detail? How about a political party that wants to propose taking over one-sixth of the US economy — a president and a political party that want to take over that much of the economy — and no details? You want to run for reelection on that? You want to run for reelection? ‘Yeah, we’re going to come to this big plan. We’re not going to tell you anything! We’re just going to deal with the big principles.’

Well, Daschle, Obama, all these guys know this is not about health care. It is really not even about health insurance. What it’s about is having a legal means, without having to change the Constitution, to get around the Bill of Rights. Remember Obama believes that the Bill of Rights is a set of ‘negative rights.’ This is a concept that’s being taught in law schools and has been for a lot of years. Negative rights. They look at the Constitution, people who believe in negative rights, as obstacle. The Bill of Rights says what Congress can’t do to you — and statists, authoritarians like Obama look at that, that’s a negative. ‘You mean I gotta deal with these ten things as president in the Bill of Rights, and they say I can’t do this? The government can’t do this and that and that and whatever?’

Yeah. So what Obama wants are things in the Constitution that say what the government can do, either for you or to you, which totally bastardizes the founding of this country. It turns the Constitution upside down and renders it irrelevant. Now, Obama knows that he cannot amend the Constitution to come up with ten new amendments that allow him to do to us or for us. But, there is a way to get around all that, and it’s really simple, compared to amending the Constitution. You take over one-sixth of the US economy, the entire health care business. You have no idea how to run it. You have no idea how to fix it. You have no idea, but still you take it over, and the reason you take it over is because then you get your positive rights.

The government can then dictate and regulate every aspect of your behavior, because whatever your behavior is is going to have ramifications on your health. This is not about health care. It’s not about the details of the plan. That’s why Obama, I don’t think he even really cares. All he did last night was lie. ‘Oh, yeah, you get to keep your own plan! Oh, if you like it, no, nothing’s gonna change — and, by the way, you’re not even going to pay for it! Just a couple millionaires are. We’re going to soak a couple millionaires again who are already paying 47% of the total income tax burden,’ and you know what this is going to lead to? This is going to lead to fewer people investing, fewer people making economic growth possible. And I refuse to believe that this is not being done on purpose. I know the purpose of health care. I know it is to regulate your life. I know it is about control.

And people do not understand why there are people who want that kind of control over other people’s lives. They think of the country as the exact opposite of that: land of the free, home of the brave, and so forth. It’s hard to convince people that something else is actually being done purposefully and it’s hard to convince people of the ultimate objective, especially if those people are not ideologically oriented — if conservative and liberal don’t really mean anything to them other than labels. But if you understand who liberals are, if you understand who their brothers on the ideological spectrum are… I mean, the brothers of liberals are Nazis, communists, socialists and so forth. If you understand what those people are about, if you understand what liberalism is, and then you add ‘radical’ to the mix, then it all makes sense. But it’s a tough thing to believe.

A lot of people don’t want to believe these kinds of things. ‘You mean this is really not about health care, Rush? He really wants as many people unemployed or…?’ Let’s put it a different way. He’s not upset by it. If he was upset about it, he’d be doing something about it. We have the blueprint. We know what to do. You reduce tax burden. You give people incentives to invest, grow, to hire people. He’s doing just the exact opposite. Everybody involved in this knows that what we’re doing is not about creating jobs and this is not about making health care better. This is about stimulating the Democrat Party, enlarging government that they control, giving them the power to regulate your behavior. ‘Cause they have contempt for you. You’re not smart enough to make the right decisions in life plus it’s just what they aspire to and that’s what we’re up against and that’s what I hoped would fail.

He has failed, but not in the way I hoped he would fail. He failed. His policies are failing miserably to accomplish his own stated objectives. But his stated objectives are not his real objectives. Folks, I’m telling you… I gotta come up with an analogy to explain this. It’s almost like saying, ‘You can jump out of that airplane without a parachute and just hope you’ll be safe when you land, and it will all work out,’ and then a bunch of people follow the order. They jump out of the airplane with no parachute, and they die. Let’s say a hundred thousand of them die. ‘It doesn’t matter. It will work! Just give us time, just give us time. We didn’t intend for those hundred thousand to live. We’ll push some more out of the plane and they’ll live next year.’ He knows what the parachute is. He’s not giving it to anybody. It’s about that. They know that they’re sending people out of airplanes with no parachutes.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Obama said last night that the health care plan is not about him, it’s not personal. The reason he’s doing this is because of the letters that he reads every day in Oval Office. Yes, the letters from beleaguered citizens who are at the precipice and they have no health insurance and, oh, how horrible. And, you know, not one time — I made this point with Greta Van Susteren today — not once did he talk about the greatness of our health care system. Not once does he talk about the greatness of this country, he doesn’t talk about the greatness of our people. He apologizes; he criticizes, he ripped the doctors and surgeons last night. He rips insurance companies. This guy, there’s something about this country that he doesn’t like and he’s eager as he can be to apologize for it. But to not talk about the greatness our system, the greatness of our care, the life expectancy raise in this country, the overall increase in health.

He sees only cheaters, liars, people that need to be punished. So he’s doing this for the letters, all these letters. Well, if this is about letters about health care, then Obama loses. We had the story yesterday of this Democrat liberal activist, pro-health care reform guy in Virginia sending out a clarion call warning people on his blast e-mail list, chastising talk radio, the phone calls and mails to Congress running 15 to 1 against the proposal. So if we’re going to do this based on the letters — he-he — I will guarantee you Obama loses big time.

This is Karen in Howell, Michigan. Karen, great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. It’s a pleasure to talk with you.

RUSH: Thank you.

CALLER: You know, I listened last night to President Obama, and I have been a nurse for over 20 years, and there might be maybe 1% of doctors who order tests, especially that kids don’t need. But for somebody to say they’re just going to take tonsils out just like that, I don’t think so. Doctors just don’t do that kind of stuff. They need all the tests that they run to make the proper diagnoses.

RUSH: Let’s be very specific about this. See, you’re actually in medicine, you are a registered nurse, right?

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: All right, so you hear this, and you react to it, ‘Well, no, maybe 1%, but no.’ I want to tell you what he was trying to do with that comment. For the president of the United States to accuse pediatricians of looking at a fee reimbursement chart and seeing that a tonsillectomy pays them more than anything else and thus choosing the tonsillectomy, do you realize the impugning of their integrity, the impugning of their character? This man last night was trying to gin up hatred for doctors. He was essentially calling them criminals, performing unnecessary organ removal for profit. I found it beneath contempt. I found it outrageous. This is not presidential. And it was shortly after that that he then lit into the insurance companies. (doing Obama impression) ‘Have you seen their profit? In this economy? Have you seen their profit?’ None of his damn business. Remember during one of the debates during the campaign he talked about the oil company profits. And he said something like, ‘And they’re just not going to let go of those easily.’ He’s after ’em.

He thinks the private sector’s his golden piggy bank that’s always going to produce and he thinks you can go along with it because you fall prey to this class-envy stuff, but the bottom line, he admitted he’s going to wipe out private insurance. As I said earlier, I don’t know if this slipped out, I don’t know if he goofed up. I know it’s what he wants to do, but saying it is quite another thing. He just telegraphed the fact that the public option is what he wants everybody to be on. If he goes after the profits of the insurance — and how is he going to do that, by the way? If they’re too profitable, in his view, what’s he going to do? Is he going to pass a law that says their profit can only be whatever percentage? Is he going to raise taxes on them? What’s he going to do? For one man to sit there and say, ‘Profit’s outrageous, we’re going to squeeze those profits.’ Well, you squeeze the profits, which are the incentive for private sector businesses to be in business, if you squeeze the profit, you squeeze them out of business because they’re competing with him and his public option, which doesn’t have to show a profit. That’s why him telling you that, ‘If you like your plan, well, fine, keep it,’ is an out-and-out misrepresentation. I’m going to find some of these fact-check stories when we start the next hour. New York Times just rips this press conference to shreds. Somebody in the Drive-Bys is getting a guilty conscience.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: No, no, no, my point is not to say Obama was wrong when he said doctors do a tonsillectomy — take out tonsils for profit. Not wrong. Didn’t make a mistake. He was on the attack. To him, the villains in health care are insurance companies and doctors. And he’s out to destroy ’em. Like he’s destroying your job market.

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