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RUSH: Okay, let’s see. Bill Clinton said that Mitt Romney is a great businessman. So we have to stop criticizing Romney and Bain Capital, as Clinton heads off to supposedly help Obama in Wisconsin. And then Deval Patrick, “I like these Bain guys. These Bain guys really helped us out here in Massachusetts. They got a great record. I like Romney.” It’s Friday, folks.

JOHNNY DONOVAN: And now, from sunny South Florida, it’s Open Line Friday!

RUSH: Yes siree, Bob, great to have you with us, my friends, El Rushbo in person, live, behind the Golden EIB Microphone serving humanity. That’s what I do, and I do it simply by showing up. What a thrill, what a delight. How exciting. It’s Friday. Ha. Now we’re here and we’ve got three hours of broadcast excellence straight ahead, with you. Our objective on Friday, we don’t often need it, but our objective is to take more phone calls on Friday than any other day of the week and I always start the program with that objective, but then stuff happens. So you know what — yeah, boy, great intentions, my — good intentions, honorable intentions, always try to start out with the mind-set of taking more phone calls on Friday than Monday through Thursday. But — and it may be the case, relatively small Stack today. Most of the Stack is the unemployment news. Anyway, folks, great to have you here, Rush Limbaugh at 800-282-2882, and the e-mail address, ElRushbo@eibnet.com.

It really is interesting, a lot of black politicians defending Romney and Bain. You’ve got Cory Booker, Deval Patrick, and now the first black president is defending Romney and Bain, Bill Clinton. And then you had Artur Davis, who left the Democrat Party in Alabama to join the Republican Party.

We go to the phones (800-282-2882) on Friday and it’s your show. You talk about whatever you want, pretend you’re the host. I don’t have to care about it, which is the case Monday through Thursday. It’s a golden opportunity. Hang on just a second. Cleaning crew comes in here, I never notice this stuff ’til the show starts. Well, just things out of alignment, no big deal. Everything’s still connected, I think.

Anyway, the unemployment news. This is heartbreaking stuff to me. A lot of people sent me e-mails today all excited because politically it’s… I’m even seeing headlines: “Another Nail in Obama’s Coffin.” Some of the Drive-By headlines, I mean, there’s no covering this, there’s no silver lining in this. Folks, the United States construction business, industry is practically shut down. Lending to small business is down. You know, everybody is wondering, “Okay, what’s Bernanke gonna do now?” Are there any tricks left? Everything they’ve tried hasn’t worked. And that was predictable. Not one thing that they’ve tried has worked. Nothing. When are people going to learn? This just doesn’t work. These numbers are heartbreaking.

Brit Hume tweeted something out. You know, the regime and the Drive-Bys say that the recession ended in June of 2009. Well, now, stick with me on this. The recession ended in June of 2009. I mean the stimulus, Porkulus, and all the other slush funds had barely started to kick in. In fact, most of them had not by June of 2009. What it means is if the recession ended in June of 2009, then none of Obama’s fixes were even in place. That means it’s all his. None of this is Bush. If we came out of the recession in June of 2009, and then every Obama fix, quote, unquote, kicks in after that, then they own this. And, by the way, we went back to the archives. I got three stories. Biden, Obama, David “Fluff” all saying in the last three years, “Oh, yeah, we own this economy; it’s ours.”


Let’s start off with the lowlights of this very serious situation. Our country is slipping back towards a recession, and the horse race side of this is pretty easy to read. It’s a disaster. It is an unmitigated train wreck disaster for the regime, for The One. But I tell you, folks, I’m as concerned about the country as I have been since before Obama was inaugurated. I don’t mean this as an “I told you so.” My fear in January of 2009 was, this is where we were headed. I didn’t want any of this to happen, and I was very confident it was going to happen. I know Obama, without having met him. I know liberalism. I had heard him say everything he had to say about economics, politics. I knew. It’s depressing to be here.

Now, Obama’s not gonna get reelected on his track record. He can’t run on anything he’s done. You go back to every incumbent president seeking reelection. Reagan had “Morning in America” and he had a recovery that was well in progress. Bush in 2004 said, “I’ve kept you safe and I’ll continue to keep you safe.” Clinton, he had a message. I forget what it was, but it was not “I’m not Bob Dole.” He had a message of achievement. He’d come out of “the worst economy in last 50 years,” in 1992, that’s what they’d called it. Bridge to the 21st century, something like that. But he had things that he had done that he could say, “Look, look, look, you need more of me.” Obama’s got none of that.

And, by the way, a little over a week ago, ladies and gentlemen, I proffered an opinion on this program. This is a regime, this is an administration, this is a president that is dominated by events. They live, politically, event to event to event, and I said — gonna go back and replay this for you — I said that I think the Supreme Court decision on health care is the event that has these people paralyzed right now. That’s what they’re waiting for. They do everything by event. They react to events and go from there. And Obama was caught telling a bunch of supporters that he needs a second term cause he might have to redo health care.

Now, the White House is denying it, but there were people at this fundraiser of this private equity thing — it was the Blackstone fundraiser — where Obama said he needs a second term ’cause I might have to fix health care. So that might be something in his arsenal. And people are interpreting that, well, now, wait a minute, if you’re confident of reelection, confident of where you’re standing, confident of your administration, why would you tell the people closest to you, why would you create a sense of doubt in the people closest to you? Why would you express something that denotes no confidence? And when you say, “I might have to redo health care,” a lot of people are saying, “Okay, he’s been given a heads-up. He knows that parts of it or all of it are going down.” That’s how it’s being interpreted. I have no idea. I’m not bothering to predict it.

Everybody has their opinions on this, but nobody really knows except those nine justices, and maybe Obama. And it could explain why he’s saying what he’s saying. He’s not, by the way, anywhere close to raising that $1 billion that was part of a PR blitz starting about a year ago. Oh, yeah, Obama’s gonna raise a billion dollars, he’s gonna skunk everyone. He’s not gonna get close to it. In fact, the Republicans in places are outraising Obama. So he’s got nothing to run on other than whatever he can say about Romney, whatever they can scare people with about Romney and they might need Obama fix health care ’cause the court might screw it up, and that’s it.

Meanwhile, the real question is: How does this get fixed? And it’s becoming apparent (it has been apparent to me all along and it’s becoming apparent to more and more people by the day) that it isn’t going to get fixed with Obama in the White House. It just isn’t going to get fixed. If you think it’s bad now, just wait ’til the remaining 60% of his agenda gets implemented. Remember, health care was timed to be fully implemented in 2014, long after Obama’s theoretical final election, which is this year: 2012.

It starts the full implementation schedule in January of next year with massive tax increases. Personal income tax increases, capital gains tax increases. Meanwhile, a shrunken US private sector will continue to shrink as Obama will hijack it. Obama’s already-passed legislation will begin to take even more out of the private sector. When you raise taxes, when you increase regulations, you take money out of the private sector. And more of that is on tap. This is as good as it gets with Obama.

The only responsible, intelligent, and reasonable way to look at this: This is as good as it gets. Let’s just apply some logic. Here we are in Realville, so let’s apply some logic. Here we are 3-1/2 years in. Pretty much everything Obama has wanted other than Card Check, he got. He got his health care. He got stimulus. He got all the spending. And we are where we are with it. How is any more of this going to improve the situation? It can only get worse, folks.

This is as good as it gets in this country as we know it with Obama. Now, let me give you some context to this disastrous employment news today. This is what was predicted before the jobs numbers were released this morning. If you read carefully yesterday and the day before, all week, what was predicted (the Wall Street consensus) was 150,000 net new jobs and a U-3 unemployment rate of 8.1%. So the “experts” quoted by AP and Reuters and CNN and USA Today — all the experts — had a consensus opinion: 150,000 new jobs and an unemployment rate unchanged at 8.1%.

Now, what happened?

Well, that consensus was about as worthwhile as the consensus on global warming. Totally worthless. It was a huge miss. You want to talk about expectations? Expectations? Nobody has any expectations anymore! There is a huge flight of capital out of world stock markets today. The jobs report says that there were 69,000 net new jobs. The consensus expectation was 150,000. These people missed it by 80,000 jobs. They missed it by a number greater than the actual number of jobs created: 69,000. The unemployment rate went up to 8.2%, but it should obviously be much, much higher than that.

But here’s the real important or big news to add to this already paltry number of 69,000. The reported unemployment numbers for March and April have been fully revised. The past two months ago were revised down by 49,000 jobs. Private sector job growth, in the last two months, was up just 82,000. If the labor force participation rate was the same today as it was when Obama took office, the unemployment rate would have been reported today as 10.9%. It would be 10.9% if the same number of people were in the job market today as when Obama was inaugurated.

But they aren’t.

We are down nearly two million people — two million people have given up, are not looking — who formerly had jobs when Obama took office. Forty-nine thousand jobs were lost in March and April that were not reported in March and April, is what this revision means. So today, in addition to 69,000 new jobs, we found out that in April and March and April we lost an additional 50,000 (49,000 plus change) that we weren’t told about in March and April. Now with a backdrop like that, remember this — and this is from our buddy Jim Pethokoukis at the American Enterprise Institute.

When you have a year of economic growth below 2% like we did in 2011, a recession follows within a year 70% of the time. ChiCom growth has slowed. Europe is on the verge of slipping into a deep recession. We have now had three profoundly weak job reports in a row. Yesterday, our gross domestic product, economic growth was revised down to 1.9%. Our debt is spiraling out of control. We have a series of major tax increases due to kick in this January. That’s what’s being called “Taxmageddon.”

White House Dossier headline: “Obama to Hold Six Fundraisers in One Day.” That’s the headline today. Yesterday. While all this is going on, Obama is going to be attending six fundraisers in one day.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: One thing about Bill Clinton. When I was talking about presidents campaigning for reelection and a second term, the reason Bill Clinton had something to sing about was because of the Republican Congress winning in 1994. Bill Clinton was able to cite all the things the Republican Congress had forced him to do. We had balanced budgets. We didn’t have it passed at the time, but welfare reform was on the table and being discussed. There was fiscal solvency taking place. That was huge.

And then, of course, the budget battle of 1995 (which did not redound well to our benefit). It all added up to Clinton had something to run on. Obama simply doesn’t have that. Now, there are five sources. Bloomberg News cites a total of five anonymous sources for their claim about Obama saying that he might need a second term to redo health care. The White House is denying it, but Bloomberg’s got five people at this fundraiser. So Obama has six fundraisers today, in one day.

And do you know they are all within shouting distance of Wisconsin? He’s not gonna set foot in Wisconsin, but they’re all within shouting distance of Wisconsin. And Clinton’s going into Wisconsin. So Obama doesn’t have the guts to go into Wisconsin because he doesn’t want what happens there tied to him, but he’s getting as close as he can. He’s gonna combine his stump speech with these fundraisers near Wisconsin so that he can hopefully say within the next week that he made a difference. It is really is disastrous and pathetic and we’re looking at full-fledged incompetence here.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: So we are at 8.2% unemployment, and in reality we are at 10.9 if the same number of people work. But that number 8.2%, that’s a number we were told we would never reach if we passed the stimulus. We would never get above 8%, never, if we passed the stimulus. If we passed stimulus, if we passed Porkulus, never get above 8%.

How good is George W. Bush looking? You know, this guy is so much smarter than people know. Yesterday the portrait unveiling at the White House, Obama can’t help himself, he has to get in his digs about how horrible it was, the mess that he inherited from Bush. And not only was it bad, it was far worse than they even knew. An unstated attempt to blame Bush for withholding data on him during the transition period. What does Bush do yesterday? What he’s done every day since he left office. He held his fire, kept his powder dry, cracked a joke. He said, “Mr. President, when you’re wandering the halls here trying to figure out what to do in tough situations, just ask, ‘What would George do?'”

I don’t think that there is an informed person in this country who wouldn’t take the Bush economy over what we’ve got here. It’s a no-brainer. The budget deficit when Bush left office was $167 billion. I mean it’s absurd to believe, and they’re still trying to blame Bush. “766,000 More Women Unemployed Today Than When Obama Took Office.” That’s Terry Jeffrey at Human Events, Cybercast News Service. “766,000 More Women Unemployed Today Than When Obama Took Office.” The number is from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, I’m depressed. I try to sound as though I have a smile on my face. This depresses me, depresses everybody. It’s difficult to see how there is going to be any significant, real, career type job growth through the end of this year. No business in its right mind will aggressively expand with significant costs ahead of it, like Obamacare, the tax increases, and the existing situation. We have a president who is running against capitalism. We have a president whose campaign is based on running against what made America great. Obama’s attacks on capitalism have become so dangerously absurd that the Democrats who are giving Romney and Bain Capital high praise full well understand what’s going on.

They don’t dare come out and be critical of Obama the way Artur Davis was, but when you have Deval Patrick and Cory Booker and Fast Eddie Rendell and Lanny Davis, Democrat after Democrat coming out and personally, with their name attached, dissociating themselves from Obama’s attack on Bain Capital, you have the equivalent of these same Democrats standing up and saying, “Obama is wrong.” The number one line of attack from the regime is being rejected by prominent Democrat governors and others all over this country. Bill Clinton is the latest. Cory Booker (Newark mayor), Lanny Davis, Deval Patrick. We have a president who has isolated himself from his party, isolated himself from free markets.

Now he’s warning contributors that Obamacare is likely to be struck down. That’s how they’re interpreting it, anyway, these people at the fundraiser. And, by the way, this is the fundraiser where Obama demanded that everybody surrender their cell phones and any other PDA. Everybody at this Obama fundraiser had to put their cell phone in a bag. Nobody was allowed to record; nobody was allowed to take any pictures. I’ve never heard of that happening. All of these Democrat fat cats had their phones taken from them when they arrived at the Obama fundraiser. It’s that fundraiser that Bloomberg has found five people saying Obama told them he might need a second term to redo health care. And these five people are interpreting it as Obama has inside information that some of it’s gonna be struck down.

Our country needs new leadership. Look how out of step the Democrats are. In Wisconsin, they forced a recall election on Governor Walker. All he’s done is balance the state’s budget. Unemployment is dropping to 2008 levels. He has not laid off anybody. Not one dire prediction made by the unions or the Democrats has come true. Just the exact opposite in Wisconsin. Barack Obama has created $5 trillion in new debt to create an absolute economic mess. And, as Romney says, he gets an F, it’s a failure, it isn’t working. A government centered society fails every time it’s tried.

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