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MONTH XX, 2009 |
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Story #1: AP: New Jobless Claims Rise "More Than Expected"
 RUSH: This is getting hilariously tiresome. From the perpetually blindsided Associated Press: "'New Jobless Claims Rise More Than Expected to 474,000 -- The tally of newly laid off workers seeking jobless benefits rose more than expected after falling for five straight weeks. The Labor Department says initial claims for unemployment insurance rose by 17,000 to a seasonally adjusted 474,000. That was above analysts' expectations." Do you realize that every time one of these reports comes out the AP experts are always shocked, it doesn't matter what happened. More or less than expected, they're always shocked. The AP is perpetually blindsided by this data. "The Labor Department analyst says claims were partly inflated by a surge following the Thanksgiving holiday week when many state unemployment offices were closed." Why should this have been unexpected? The article itself says right here, Labor Department says claims were partly inflated by a surge following the Thanksgiving holiday. That's why last week the numbers were down. There weren't as many days to go file claims, Thanksgiving week. Two days out of the five days they were closed. This week they were open so it's a surge.
Why would anybody who can think with any logical progression at all be shocked at this? Even though the Thanksgiving holiday closings weren't noted when the AP gave its glowing jobs report last week, some of us noted it would cause the next week's numbers to go up. We are never surprised here at the EIB Network. But, anyway, when you boil it all down, who cares. Unemployment numbers are like Obama's Gallup numbers written with a crayon by a six-year-old, as Robert Gibbs said, and they're just as meaningless because the recession is over, happy days are here again. That's in the Universe of Lies. That's the spin.
Story #2: Henninger Echoes Rush in Second Stimulus Proposal
RUSH: Daniel Henninger in the Wall Street Journal has another great piece, and I want to excerpt it. It reminded me, and I say this with all due respect to Daniel Henninger at the Wall Street Journal, it reminded me of my piece from almost a year ago and things that I've said and explained for a long time on the Limbaugh bipartisan stimulus plan that I offered to President Obama at the time last January or February when he said he was open to all ideas. So I wrote that op-ed and presented my idea. My proposal was written for the first Porkulus bill, and Henninger here is writing his reaction to the proposed second stimulus bill, the taking of $200 billion unspent TARP money. I'm not trying to embarrass Mr. Henninger here; I'm trying to praise him. He writes a terrific column. It does stand on its own. I just find it interesting to compare it to mine.
Here's Henninger: "Every serious person should welcome the president's proposals to lift the dormant economy and reduce unemployment. Not because every serious person would agree with them but because they are a clear test of how a left-wing government would run the American economy. If this works, hats off to them and we become France. If not, Americans may finally dump left-wing economics into the ash heap of history, starting next November and then in the next presidential election, which can't come soon enough. ... No Democratic president, though, can just say, 'I'm doing this to save the Pelosi majority and to protect the state and local jobs of Andy Stern's dues payers and party regulars in the Service.'" In other words, Henninger is saying the Democrats cannot be honest about what their objectives really are here.
"Mr. Obama's saving grace is that no matter how political his initiatives, the reasons he offers for what he's doing generally do describe what is at stake. ... At the jobs summit, Mr. Obama said 'I want to hear from CEOs what's holding back our business investment.' Really? How about the world's highest corporate tax rate? How about the 5.4% health-care surtax on top of the expiring Bush tax cuts, which will push the top marginal individual rate, paid at the outset by many entrepreneurs, well over 40%?" Now, that was the purpose of the Limbaugh plan.
Here's what I wrote: "There's a serious debate in this country as to how best to end the recession. The average recession will last five to 11 months; the average recovery will last six years. Recessions will end on their own if they're left alone. What can make the recession worse is the wrong kind of government intervention. I believe the wrong kind is precisely what President Barack Obama has proposed. I don't believe his is a 'stimulus plan' at all -- I don't think it stimulates anything but the Democratic Party. This 'porkulus' bill is designed to repair the Democratic Party's power losses from the 1990s forward, and to cement the party's majority power for decades. ... In this new era of responsibility, let's use both Keynesians and supply-siders to responsibly determine which theory best stimulates our economy -- and if elements of both work, so much the better.
"As a way to bring the country together and at the same time determine the most effective way to deal with recessions, under the Obama-Limbaugh Stimulus Plan of 2009: 54% of the $900 billion -- $486 billion -- will be spent on infrastructure and pork as defined by Mr. Obama and the Democrats; 46% -- $414 billion -- will be directed toward tax cuts, as determined by me. Then we compare. We see which stimulus actually works. This is bipartisanship! It would satisfy the American people's wishes, as polls currently note; and it would also serve as a measurable test as to which approach best stimulates job growth. I say, cut the U.S. corporate tax rate -- at 35%, among the highest of all industrialized nations -- in half. Suspend the capital gains tax for a year to incentivize new investment, after which it would be reimposed at 10%. Then get out of the way!"
"But, Rush, but, Rush, did you hear President Obama did suspend the capital gains tax for small businesses for a year?" I saw that, but two things about that. First off, what is a capital gains tax? You have to sell an asset at a gain before there's a tax involved. What small business has gains that they're selling? Meanwhile, the House came out and said, screw it, they proposed legislation to double it or triple it. I'll get the details in a moment. Anyway, Daniel Henninger says, "look, every serious person in the world --" I've heard this argument expressed in many different ways: Hey, get out of the way, let the left do what they're going to do, and people will find out how rotten it is, and then they'll never vote for it again. It doesn't work that way, because if it did, if it worked that way, then no Democrat would have ever been elected after Ronald Reagan. It would not have happened because the eighties were the most prosperous decade that led to prosperity all the way through the late nineties, with a couple blip, minor little economic slowdowns in the early nineties during the campaign of 1992.
It doesn't work that way, especially in this case, if we just sit idly by and let President Obama get all this stuff done, we're cooked, because this is not just standard left-wing politics. This is radical left-wing Marxist socialism, fascism, whatever you want to call it. This is designed to forever remake the United States and to destroy the prosperity generating capitalist system in the private sector. So it's hard to sit by and let that happen, for people to say, "Oh, my God, this is horrible, we're not going to vote for this again." Well, I've never heard of an entitlement being rolled back once they get it, like this health care bill. This has to be stopped. Cap and trade has to be stopped. The EPA, somehow there has to be pressure mounted to see to it that they do not by fiat unilaterally implement cap and trade. This is serious stuff. I think people are already seeing the flight of the independents away from Obama, his cratering in the approval polls, cratering in the approval of health care. We don't need the stuff to pass and get signed into law before people understand what a disaster it is. I actually think it's kind of uplifting in a way that even before it is passed and with no attention being paid to the truth of what these pieces of legislation are from the mainstream media, a majority of Americans want no part of any of it.
Story #3: Tina Brown Wonders If Obama Believes What He Says
RUSH: Now, this is kind of interesting. I don't want to make too much out of this. Tina Brown, one of the doyennes of New York society and literature, she and her husband, Sir Harry Evans, quite dominant and prevalent. They are the Ben Bradlee and the Sally Quinn of the New York media social set. She has edited Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, she now has a website called The Daily Beast. And this is what she wrote on December 3rd at The Daily Beast: "It's a strange paradox for a great wordsmith, but whenever Obama makes an important policy speech these days he leaves everyone totally confused. His first health-care press conference back in July triggered a season of raucous political Rorschach and left his hopeful followers utterly baffled about what they were being asked to support. Now White House envoys are being dispatched all over the globe to explain what the president really meant about the date when troops will or won't be pulled out of Afghanistan... Does Obama create confusion on purpose? Is this his 'process' based on his confession that he's a screen onto which people project things? Is it a strategy so that whatever bill trickles out of Congress or however many soldiers linger in Afghanistan, he can claim that the outcome is what he meant all along?... Or is it that there is so much subtext to every part of this message that the simple heads of the electorate are just not pointy enough to comprehend it? I" -- writes Tina Brown -- "have come to the conclusion that the real reason this gifted communicator has become so bad at communicating is that he doesn't really believe a word that he is saying." I think, at the risk of publicly humiliating her by agreeing with her, I will agree with her.
And this is why there's no passion from the guy about anything. I'm sure that the guy's got varicose veins, because without that he's be totally colorless. This guy, I'm telling you, is a dryball. There's no passion or emotion about any of his proposals, the things he supposedly cares about. And Tina Brown says, 'cause he doesn't really believe a word he's saying. "He couldn't convey that health-care reform would somehow be cost-free because he knows it won't be. And he can't adequately convey the imperatives or the military strategy of the war in Afghanistan because he doesn't really believe in it either." Which, she's right. I mean, the war in Afghanistan is an inconvenience. He really, I think, is irritated that he has to deal with it.
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Story #3: Tina Brown Wonders If Obama Believes What He Says
RUSH: Now, this is kind of interesting. I don't want to make too much out of this. Tina Brown, one of the doyennes of New York society and literature, she and her husband, Sir Harry Evans, quite dominant and prevalent. They are the Ben Bradlee and the Sally Quinn of the New York  media social set. She has edited Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, she now has a website called The Daily Beast. And this is what she wrote on December 3rd at The Daily Beast: "It's a strange paradox for a great wordsmith, but whenever Obama makes an important policy speech these days he leaves everyone totally confused. His first health-care press conference back in July triggered a season of raucous political Rorschach and left his hopeful followers utterly baffled about what they were being asked to support. Now White House envoys are being dispatched all over the globe to explain what the president really meant about the date when troops will or won't be pulled out of Afghanistan... Does Obama create confusion on purpose? Is this his 'process' based on his confession that he's a screen onto which people project things? Is it a strategy so that whatever bill trickles out of Congress or however many soldiers linger in Afghanistan, he can claim that the outcome is what he meant all along?... Or is it that there is so much subtext to every part of this message that the simple heads of the electorate are just not pointy enough to comprehend it? I" -- writes Tina Brown -- "have come to the conclusion that the real reason this gifted communicator has become so bad at communicating is that he doesn't really believe a word that he is saying." I think, at the risk of publicly humiliating her by agreeing with her, I will agree with her.
And this is why there's no passion from the guy about anything. I'm sure that the guy's got varicose veins, because without that he's be totally colorless. This guy, I'm telling you, is a dryball. There's no passion or emotion about any of his proposals, the things he supposedly cares about. And Tina Brown says, 'cause he doesn't really believe a word he's saying. "He couldn't convey that health-care reform would somehow be cost-free because he knows it won't be. And he can't adequately convey the imperatives or the military strategy of the war in Afghanistan because he doesn't really believe in it either." Which, she's right. I mean, the war in Afghanistan is an inconvenience. He really, I think, is irritated that he has to deal with it.
Story #4: House Democrats Double Tax Obama Said He'd Cut
RUSH: So Obama goes out there at the Brookings Institution this week and says we're gonna suspend the capital gains tax on small business for a year. And, of course, you have to sell an asset for a profit before there's a gain on it. It doesn't apply. But, anyway, this from Wall Street Journal: "House Democrats keep stepping on President Obama's applause lines about innovation and job creation. On Tuesday, Mr. Obama announced that 'we're proposing a complete elimination of capital gains taxes on small business investment' for one year. Responding with rare dispatch, the House voted yesterday to change the capital gains rate for venture capitalists who invest in technology start-ups. But rather than eliminating the tax, the House more than doubled it, moving the tax rate to 35% from 15% by reclassifying such gains as ordinary income. Private equity fund managers and managers of real-estate and oil-and-gas partnerships would also get socked with this 133% tax-rate increase. Now there's a way to encourage economic growth and new jobs." So nothing they say, my good friends, can be believed. Nothing they say can be believed.
Story #5: GE's Immelt Attacks Mean, Greedy Business Leaders
RUSH: How about this? Jeffrey Immelt, the CEO of General Electric and in Obama's pocket, by the way, when it comes to green jobs and all that, because Immelt figures the government's going to give him a bunch of money to develop green turbines and green jet engines and green windmills and what have you. Jeff Immelt said yesterday that "his generation of business leaders had succumbed to 'meanness and greed' that had harmed the US economy and increased the gap between the rich and the poor. Mr Immelt’s attack on his fellow corporate chiefs -- made in a speech at the West Point military academy -- is one of the strongest criticisms by a top executive of the compensation and business practices that prevailed before the financial crisis. 'We are at the end of a difficult generation of business leadership ... tough-mindedness, a good trait, was replaced by meanness and greed, both terrible traits,' said Mr. Immelt, who succeeded Jack Welch, one of the toughest leaders of his generation, at the helm of the US conglomerate. 'Rewards became perverted. The richest people made the most mistakes with the least accountability.'" Folks, I think somebody at the White House wrote his speech. That's exactly what they think up there, and they've got an ally, GE.
Story #6: Another Blue Dog Flees the Sinking Democrat Ship
RUSH: Here's another one, folks. Brian Baird, a Democrat from the state of Washington, member of the House, announced last night that he will not be running for reelection. He's the third Democrat in a competitive district to announce retirement plans in the last month. Rats are beginning to flee what they think is going to be a sinking ship.
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