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RUSH: You know, ladies and gentlemen, this Syria stuff, I just have to say this is getting embarrassing. This is not how a great power operates. This is just rank amateur time, everybody involved. Here’s McCain at the hearing yesterday caught playing poker on his iPhone, and Wolf Blitzer over at CNN had to be convinced that it was just a game. He thought that McCain was actually online gambling, was trying to make a story out of it. And I’m sitting there thinking maybe McCain will draw four queens and think that he’s now in a Muslim marriage and move. Well, you can sit there and dream. (laughing)

It’s all you can do. It’s all you can do is laugh at this stuff. This Syria business, Obama now claiming he never did the red line. He was going to blame it on Bush but he figured not even that would be… So he’s now blaming it on the world. The world did the red line. And everybody is acting like this is huff and puff, the most dangerous, it’s horrible, “Oh, we’ve got to do something.” In the meantime, the effort to defund Obamacare is being dwarfed and everybody’s attention is being distracted away from it. I don’t know if that’s being done on purpose, but it’s a practical reality of this.

To me this is embarrassing. This is just not how a great power goes about dealing with what we’re told here is a terribly consequential matter. I mean, Barack Obama is running around the world well, what is he doing now? He’s got the G20 coming up. The red line, he didn’t do it, but he did. We have the audio. He did. He used “me” and “I” when talking about flexibility and stuff last summer when he mentioned the red line. Then he’s off to Russia to meet with gay and lesbian leaders. In Russia, all because Putin is banning them from the Olympics.


You know, he says no to Putin at the G20. He punts Putin, but he’s going to go to Russia and meet with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender people. It’s unserious. Obama’s a clown. Really, folks, I took all of this very seriously yesterday and I’m watching everybody here take it seriously and wring their hands over it. John Kerry is an absolute idiot. Wait ’til you hear the sound bites of Kerry yesterday at the hearing when Medea Benjamin of Code Pink shows up. They started having a love-in practically as they’re remembering the great protest days of the sixties, while McCain’s sitting there playing poker on his iPhone! Poker, spades, what’s the difference? And you never know. He might have been involved in a remote game with Obama on the other end of it while this was all going on.

And meanwhile, does anybody remember all of those supposed gaffes that Mitt Romney made in his swing through Europe during the campaign? He didn’t make any gaffes, but every time he opened his mouth, the media said he’d committed a gaffe. They portrayed Romney as unqualified, a stick in the mud, an arrogant elitist, a rich guy out of touch with everybody, embarrassing himself every time he opened his mouth, which he didn’t. Romney was making serious statements. He was trying to deal with foreign policy as a candidate in a serious way making his swing through Europe and everybody putting it down, impugning it and so forth. And we have to sit here and watch somebody, our president, bumble through this stuff when everybody seems totally focused on making sure the world doesn’t figure out that we’ve got somebody bumbling through this stuff. And meanwhile, the world knows!

The Iranians, the Russians, everybody’s watching this. They’re understanding that we’ve got somebody that’s really wet behind the ears in terms of qualifications for all this stuff, just bumbling through this. We’re talking about chemical weapons that have been used by somebody on the people of Syria and Obama’s, “Okay, well, we’re going to have to strike.” And then he changes it and says, “I’m not going to do it without congressional authority.” That starts a whole new argument. Just like Clinton today I’m sorry to be all over the ballpark, folks, it’s sort of stream of conscience here. Clinton is at his library and massage parlor in Little Rock selling health care. A political speech on health care.

Meanwhile, I’m led to believe and I’m sure you are, too, that what’s happening in Syria is a matter of gravity, grave consequences, Middle East, chemical weapons, Bashar Assad, Muslim Brotherhood running amok, Middle East powder keg, all of this stuff. And what does Obama do? Everything these people do is political. He sends Axelrod out on TV to start trashing the Republicans on this as though it’s nothing more than a budget battle or some other battle on legislation. I mean, it is so beneath the former stature of this country in matters like this. If it weren’t otherwise so serious, it would be a little comical.

I remember Romney raising serious concerns about the security at the London Olympics. That turned out to be a howler. Boy, aren’t we glad we dodged that Romney bullet? I mean, how embarrassing would it have been to have a guy like Romney as president. Wow, what an idiot when it comes to foreign policy. Oh, yeah, Mitt Romney, can’t have that. Thank goodness we have somebody highly competent and battle tested like Obama in charge.

The Washington Post has an article this morning about how Obama has turned to his brain trust for selling his attack in Syria. Everything is politics to these people, and the Republicans are the villains. Don’t care what the story, don’t care what the event, don’t care how serious or irrelevant. The Republicans are the villains and that’s how they sell it. And the Republicans haven’t the slightest idea at the same time what really to do here.

The Republican/conservative right is just as confused about all this because they are scared to death to say or do anything critical of Obama. They’re just paralyzed, and we all have a pretty good guess why that is, and it’s race. They’re just paralyzed. Not only are they paralyzed from being critical, they think they’ve got to act like they agree and sign onto whatever it is. Amnesty. Health care. There’s no serious effort here to push back on that. You name it.

The Washington Post has an article this morning about how Obama has turned to his “brain trust” for selling his attack on Syria, and the brain trust includes David Axelrod, David Plouffe, Robert Gibbs, Anita Dunn, Stephanie Cutter, Tommy Vietor and some former speechwriter — and these people are nothing but cutthroat campaign people. So the way that we’re going to sell military intervention in Syria is to beat up the Republicans and force them to vote “yes” with Obama on this.


I still hold out this possibility that Obama hopes they don’t give him the use of force authorization so that he can blame the atrocities on them — which, by the way, Axelrod and the boys are already starting to intimate. “If Republicans don’t join the president here, the blood, the skin warts and whatever else happens from chemical weapons will be on the Republicans’ hands.” Not whoever’s using the weapons in Syria, but the Republicans will be responsible for this, because the Republicans are always the villains.

Can you imagine the kind of advisors Romney would have gathered around him?

I’ll bet they wouldn’t have anybody as smart as Samantha Power or Susan Rice. It’s just amazing. I want to develop this further, but at the same time helping me do that are the sound bites that we have with Obama on this red line business anyway. But this is absurd. We’re in the midst of total absurdity the way this is being dealt with, the unserious way it’s being handled. But I guess it makes sense, given the unserious nature of the way everything else that is important is treated.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: If I were Bashar Assad and I were watching all this, I’d start thinking that maybe all of this is for show and that there never will be an attack. I think he would be making an error thinking that, but I could see where he might think it. I mean, he’s the object. He’s the guy we’re aiming at, right? I’m just telling you to illustrate. I think Bashar’s over there looking at this and thinking, “You know, this guy’s huffing and puffing. It’s all for show.”

Everything this guy does is for domestic political consumption. I wouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t do diddly squat — and if he does, it will be akin to what Clinton did: Launch a cruise missiles into the 33rd floor of an office tower (if they have one in Syria) on a Saturday night. You know, get in, get it, and get out inside of 25 minutes or so and say, “We’ve had an attack and we’ve taken care of it. We hit the targets and we’re gone.” We accept the accolades and all that.

If you look at the legislative calendar — which, of course, ladies and gentlemen, is one of my all time favorite things to do, just so you know — there are forty days left in the legislative calendar this year. It may not sound like much because it isn’t. Recesses, holidays, poker games. Forty days remaining, and in those forty days we’ve got to do whatever we’re going to do in Syria.

We’ve got to do whatever we’re going to do in implementing defunding, delaying, or rubber stamping Obamacare. We got the biiiig debt crisis coming up. The continuing resolution expires on September 30th and that has to be dealt with. That’s where, if anything is going to happen with Obamacare, it will happen. In these forty days that are remaining with all that on the agenda, is there time for the regime and the Republicans to push amnesty through?

I don’t know.

I mean, I’m just throwing it out there as something to think about, but I can tell you that while everybody’s now focusing on Syria, all the attention being paid to Obamacare has vanished, but the stories haven’t. Michigan has premium increases of 112%! I mean, they just keep pouring in. I’ve got the health care stack today to share with you about the costs of this plan. It’s going through the roof wherever you look. It’s just mind boggling. It’s the theater of the absurd. This, to me, is incomprehensible.

And yet it’s happening, so I have to deal with it.

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