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January 22, 2009 |
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Story #1: More Watched Reagan's Inaugural Than Obama's
RUSH: Well, for all the talk about the popularity of Obama's inauguration, more people watched American Idol than watched his inauguration, and millions more watched Ronald Reagan's inauguration. So again, Reagan wins a landslide -- many more millions watch -- and yet the era of Reagan is over, we're told, and that Obama's inauguration set all kinds of records. None of it true.
Story #2: Dick Morris on Obama: Here Comes Socialism
RUSH: Dick Morris, a great column at TheHill.com. I'm holding it here in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers. It was posted on January 20th, two days ago at 6:12 p.m.: "The Obama Presidency: Here Comes Socialism." Excerpts: "2009-2010 will rank with 1913-1914, 1933-1936, 1964-1965 and 1981-1982 as years that will permanently change our government, politics and lives. Just as the stars were aligned for Wilson, Roosevelt, Johnson and Reagan, they are aligned for Barack Obama. Simply put, we enter his administration as free enterprise, market-dominated, laissez-faire America. We will shortly become like Germany, France, the United Kingdom or Sweden -- a socialist democracy in which the government dominates the economy, determines private sector priorities and offers a vastly expanded range of services to many more people at much higher taxes.
 "Obama will accomplish his agenda of 'reform' under the rubric of 'recovery.' Using the electoral mandate bestowed on a Democratic Congress by restless voters and the economic power given his administration by terrified Americans, he will change our country fundamentally in the name of lifting the depression. His stimulus packages won't do much to shorten the downturn -- although they will make it less painful -- but they will do a great deal to change our nation. In implementing his agenda, Obama will emulate the example of Franklin D. Roosevelt (not the liberal mythology of the New Deal, but the actuality of what it accomplished). When FDR took office, he was enormously successful in averting a total collapse of the banking system and the economy. But his New Deal measures only succeeded in lowering the unemployment rate from 23 percent in 1933 when he took office to 13 percent in the summer of 1937. It never went lower. And his policies of over-regulation generated such business uncertainty that they triggered a second-term recession. Unemployment rose to 17 percent in 1938 and, in 1940, on the verge of the war-driven recovery, stood at 15 percent. (These data and the real story of Hoover's and Roosevelt's missteps, uncolored by ideology, are available in 'The Forgotten Man' by Amity Shlaes.)" Great book, by the way, copyright 2007.
"But in the name of a largely unsuccessful effort to end the depression, Roosevelt passed crucial and permanent reforms that have dominated our lives ever since, including Social Security, the creation of the SEC, unionization under the Wagner Act, the federal minimum wage and a host of other fundamental changes. Obama's record will be similar, although less wise and more destructive. He will begin by passing every program for which liberals have lusted for decades, from alternative energy sources to school renovations to infrastructure repairs to technology enhancements. These are all good programs, but they normally would be stretched out for years. Freed of any constraint on the deficit -- indeed empowered by a mandate to raise it as high as possible -- Obama will do them all rather quickly.
"But it's not his spending --" this is key "-- it is not his spending that will transform our political system; it is his tax and welfare policies. In the name of short-term stimulus, he will give every American family (who makes less than $200,000) a welfare check of $1,000 euphemistically called a refundable tax credit. And he will so sharply cut taxes on the middle class and the poor that the number of Americans who pay no federal income tax will rise from the current one-third of all households to more than half. In the process, he will create a permanent electoral majority that does not pay taxes, but counts on ever expanding welfare checks from the government. The dependency on the dole, formerly limited in pre-Clinton days to 14 million women and children on AFDC, will now grow to a clear majority of the U.S. population.
"Will he raise taxes? Why should he? With a congressional mandate to run the deficit up as high as need be, there is no reason to raise taxes now and risk aggravating the depression. Instead, Obama will follow the opposite of the Reagan strategy. Reagan cut taxes and increased the deficit so that liberals could not increase spending. Obama will raise spending and increase the deficit so that conservatives cannot cut taxes. And when the economy is restored, he will raise taxes with impunity since the only people who would have to pay them would be rich Republicans. ... Obama will move to change permanently the partisan balance in America. He will move quickly to legalize all those who have been in America for five years, albeit illegally, and to smooth their paths to citizenship and voting. He will weaken border controls in an attempt to hike the Latino vote as high as he can in order to make red states like Texas into blue states like California. By the time he is finished, Latinos and African-Americans will cast a combined 30 percent of the vote. If they go by top-heavy margins for the Democrats, as they did in 2008, it will assure Democratic domination -- until they move up the economic ladder and become good Republicans."
All of this, by the way, we warned you during the campaign, that this is the objective of all these economic plans, the entrenchment of the Democrat Party in power in perpetuity. That's what's being fixed here. What was broken was the 50-year rule of power that FDR engineered with Social Security and Medicare and all these other things. The Republicans then botched all that by winning the Congress in 1994. It's about the House of Representatives. That's where the power is. That's where all spending bills originate. White House can go back and forth. Democrats control the Congress, as we saw in the last two years, they run the show. Therefore, this is all about empowering and retrenching the Democrat Party.
"Obama will enact the check-off card system for determining labor union representation, repealing the secret ballot in union elections. The result will be to raise the proportion of the labor force in unions up to the high teens from the current level of about 12 percent. Finally, he will use the expansive powers of the Federal Communications Commission to impose 'local' control and ownership of radio stations and to impose the 'fairness doctrine' on talk radio. The effect will be to drive talk radio to the Internet, fundamentally change its economics and retard its growth for years hence." I firmly believe this is going to be attempted, but not under the words Fairness Doctrine. I have seen the Obama White House website where they are going to attempt to effect this. And they are going to do it, Morris is right here. They will do it with something called a local content rule, diversity of ownership rules changes, and public interest regulations and requirements, which will mandate on local broadcasters that they do certain things in the public interest. It will be a stealth way and they'll put it in a stimulus bill, they will put it in an omnibus spending bill. There won't even have been any debate on it; nobody is going to know it's going to happen. It will be in one of those things that no senator or member of the House can read because it's too large and the focus will be the stimulus getting us out of this rotten economy, and that's how they're going to go about implementing the Fairness Doctrine. And make no mistake they're going to do it.
"But none of these changes," Morris writes, "will cure the depression. It will end when the private sector works through the high debt levels that triggered the collapse in the first place. And then, the large stimulus package deficits will likely lead to rapid inflation, probably necessitating a second recession to cure it. So Obama's name will be mud by 2012 and probably by 2010, as well. And the Republican Party will make big gains and regain much of its lost power. But it will be too late to reverse the socialism of much of the economy, the demographic change in the electorate, the rationing of health care by the government, the surge of unionization and the crippling of talk radio."
This is what Dick Morris sees, and Obama is moving fast on a lot of these things and we're going to keep a sharp eye to see how quickly he moves. But this is Dick Morris, "The Obama Presidency: Here Comes Socialism."
Story #3: UK Editorial on Pop Culture and the Cult of Obama
RUSH: Moving on to the United Kingdom, an editorial: "A victory for the hysterical Oprah Winfrey, the mad racist preacher Jeremiah Wright, the mainstream media who abandoned any sense of objectivity long ago, Europeans who despise America largely because they depend on her, comics who claim to be dangerous and fearless but would not dare attack genuinely powerful special interest groups. A victory for Obama-worshippers everywhere. A victory for the cult of the cult. A man who has done little with his life but has written about his achievements as if he had found the cure for cancer in between winning a marathon and building a nuclear reactor with his teeth. Victory for style over substance, hyperbole over history, rabble-raising over reality. A victory for Hollywood, the most dysfunctional community in the world. Victory for Streisand, Spielberg, Soros and Sarandon. Victory for those who prefer welfare to will and interference to independence. For those who settle for group think and herd mentality rather than those who fight for individual initiative and the right to be out of step with meager political fashion." That would be me, resisting the tug of the popular sentiment. Proudly, by the way.
"Victory for a man who is no friend of freedom. He and his people have already stated that media has to be controlled so as to be balanced, without realizing the extraordinary irony within that statement. Like most liberal zealots, the Obama worshippers constantly speak of Fox and Limbaugh, when the vast bulk of television stations and newspapers are drastically liberal and anti-conservative. Senior Democrat Chuck Schumer said that just as pornography should be censored, so should talk radio. In other words, one of the few free and open means of popular expression may well be cornered and beaten by bullies who even in triumph cannot tolerate any criticism and opposition. A victory for those who believe the state is better qualified to raise children than the family, for those who prefer teachers' unions to teaching and for those who are naively convinced that if the West is sufficiently weak towards its enemies, war and terror will dissolve as quickly as the tears on the face of a leftist celebrity. A victory for social democracy even after most of Europe has come to the painful conclusion that social democracy leads to mediocrity, failure, unemployment, inflation, higher taxes and economic stagnation. A victory for intrusive lawyers, banal sentimentalists, social extremists and urban snobs. Congratulations America," on your choice.
So that was an editorial somewhere in the UK. It ain't me, babe. No, no, no, it ain't me, babe, who wrote that.
Story #4: Larry King: My Eight-Year Old Son Wants to be Black
RUSH: Let's see. This is from the UK Telegraph. I've not seen this reported anywhere in the American Drive-By Media, so let me just read it to you as it's reported here. "CNN's orange-haired septuagenarian chatterbox Larry King has been bowled over by the new Age of Obama, enthusing that his youngest offspring (from his seventh marriage) wants to be black. ... Interviewing a visibly uncomfortable Bob Woodward on his eponymous CNN show last night, Larry, 75, gushed: 'My younger son Cannon, he is eight. And he now says that he would like to be black. I'm not kidding. He said there's a lot of advantages. Black is in. Is this a turning of the tide?'" he asked Bob Woodward. "The distinguished Watergate scribbler responded 'well, maybe' and talked about how his 12-year-old daughter Diana liked Barack Obama's inaugural speech before gingerly steering the discussion towards George W. Bush's magnanimity and how he 'hasn't, you know, made any cheap shots' at his White House successor." Black is in, and Larry King's eight-year-old son wants to be black. Well, if Michael Jackson can become white, I'm sure this can be arranged.
Story #5: Obama Makes Exceptions to New Lobbyist Rules
RUSH: By the way, yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, President Obama said lobbyists are banned from his administration. You remember that? They announced that yesterday. Lobbyists are banned from his administration. Yet, his nominees to be deputy secretary of Department of Defense and deputy secretary of Health and Human Services, both of them are lobbyists, who break Obama's rule. Obama's team was asked about the contradiction, and the Obama team, whoever the administration's answer was, "Well, rules require reasonable exceptions, and we didn't want to turn the town upside down."
The Associated Press has the story this way: "'Even the toughest rules require reasonable exceptions,' White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said." New York Times: "A senior White House official speaking on the condition of anonymity conceded that the two nominees did not adhere to the new rules required by Obama. 'When you set very tough rules you need to have a mechanism for the occasional exception,' the official said, adding, 'we wanted to be really tough, but at the same time we didn't want to hamstring the new administration or turn the town upside down.'" Washington Post: "Obama's remarks evoked criticism from the Republican National Committee, which noted that Obama has nominated William J. Lynn III, a former Raytheon lobbyist, as deputy secretary of defense. Lobbying reports filed by Raytheon with the Senate states that Lynn was part of a group that lobbied Congress and the Pentagon in 2007 and 2008."
So the new lobbying rules don't mean anything. All these ethics and lobbying rules don't mean anything, because Robert Gibbs -- who is doing the White House, his first ever White House briefing right now -- said, "Well, you know, tough rules require reasonable exceptions, and we didn't want to turn the town upside down. I mean, you gotta have exceptions." It's just like lying now and then is good for people. It's like we now have another historic first in this administration: our first tax cheat as secretary of the treasury.
Story #6: First Lady's Clothes Draw Catty Remarks from Gals
RUSH: I've been staying away from this, but I have to tell you something. I have been getting some of the cattiest e-mails from women I know about the "curtain that [Michelle Obama] made into a dress" for the inaugural ball. Well, it did look like a drape. I have stayed away from it. You know, she didn't run. She wasn't elected to anything. She's not a Hillary. So I have stayed away from it. But this confirmed something I've known all of my adult life, and that is: While we guys are out there looking at women, so are other women, and these women are looking at other women with daggers in their eyes. There is inherent jealousy or shock or dismay. And you wouldn't have believed some of the comments I got about what Michelle wore to the actual immaculation ceremony. I don't want to repeat them.
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