RUSH: Let’s go Cleveland, where we have Al Haji on the phone. Hello, Al Haji, nice to have you with us.
CALLER: How you doing, Rush?
RUSH: Good.
CALLER: I like your show. I listen to you. This is the first time I call. I’m going to make a comment about what you talking about Obama, like the way you trying to point to his emptiness, you know. That’s what I’m responding. This guy lay all his plan, and everybody here in Cleveland, or most of the people I talk to, they accept it, they love it.
RUSH: Al Haji, I see this. Look, you are misunderstanding me, Al Haji. I am not saying that Obama is empty. He is a full-fledged socialist. I’m saying his speeches are filled with nothing, until last night where he got specific about his economic socialism.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: I’m saying the people in those crowds that he’s drawing don’t care what he’s saying, Al Haji.
CALLER: I’m sorry if I misunderstood you, but Rush, you have to remember, now, I come to this country, I been here for 14 years. I listened to George Bush used to say —
RUSH: Where did you come here from? Where did you emigrate from?
CALLER: I come from West Africa, Senegal.
RUSH: Senegal?
CALLER: Yes. And, you know, I love this country, you can tell if you know Senegal because we are a democratic country supporting the US in the ’91 Gulf War, you know, but George Bush used to say, let me get to this point, he used to say Democrats are going to raise your taxes. You remember when John Kerry was running? He never specific how they going to raise it. Now Obama has come to be more specific than Kerry. He say if you make less than $75,000. He’s making the case. He’s connecting. He’s communicating directly to the people. No Republican —
RUSH: Al Haji, sir, there’s a little problem here in that Obama said in his speech that people who make $50,000 a year need the tax cuts and that they’re going to be given even more tax cuts. I mean, the fact of the matter is that people who make $50,000 a year are paying less than I think 5%, 3% of the entire income tax burden in this country today. Pretty soon there is going to be no tax paid, if you earn under $50,000 a year, and that happened, by the way, with George W. Bush.
CALLER: Okay. Well, you know, you can argue that — (unintelligible). But another point I want to make is this. Because I told whoever take my call, I’m going to vote for Obama for so many reasons, but don’t you think, if you remember how many years we’ve been saying let’s help Africa about malaria, about AIDS, nothing gets done yet. Why don’t we try to put him in charge and see.
RUSH: Al Haji, you know, you’re really scaring me.
CALLER: No, I’m just —
RUSH: No. No, no. You are really scaring me, and that’s why I asked you where you were from. I thought your accent was sub-Saharan Africa.
CALLER: Yeah, I’m from —
RUSH: Do you know where President Bush is this week?
CALLER: I know, he’s in Tanzania and Rwanda. I appreciate that.
RUSH: Do you know the kinds of reception, do you know the love, the devotion, the ceremonies the people of Africa are throwing for President Bush when he arrives in each of these countries, and do you know why?
CALLER: Why?
RUSH: Because he’s done more for Africa than any American president ever has, particularly on malaria, particularly on AIDS. I mean, even these left-wing rockers like Bob Geldof of the Boomtown Rats who’s done Live Aid and all these things to save money is saying, ‘Bush, Bush, Bush,’ and Geldof is flying along with Bush on Air Force One. Now, what in the world —
CALLER: No, no, no, no —
RUSH: — about you Obama supporters? Obama hasn’t said a word about AIDS in Africa that I can recall, and —
CALLER: Yes, he did! Yes, he did!
RUSH: Well, maybe —
CALLER: Yes, he did.
RUSH: Maybe he has, but it’s not out there prominently. I mean, you gotta be following Obama like a supporter. But the point is, you are —
CALLER: No —
RUSH: — he is a blank canvas, Al Haji and you can make him be whatever you want him to be. That’s the purpose of the nothingness. And so now you’ve got him saving Africa after he saves America when President Bush has been in the process of doing more for Africa than anybody else.
CALLER: No, no, no, you don’t hear me Rush, you don’t hear me say anything when it comes to Africa. You don’t hear me say anything against George Bush. He do well. He come to Senegal where I’m originally from two years ago. I respect what he do for Africa, but I’m saying, I’m saying all these years, I’m not talking about the George Bush years, I’m talking about since I was a kid, you heard commercials, everything saying lets help Africa, nothing get done, because what happened is you don’t put the help in the right hands. You always put it in the government who are in charge over there and (unintelligible)
RUSH: Amen, bro. Amen. I agree with you a hundred percent. In fact, I think the best thing could happen for Africa is to have the aid cut off for like five years because two things have happened, and you’re right. The money that has been given in previous years by this country and UNICEF and all the other worldwide organizations, all the money, all the time, all the caring, all the compassion to save Africa, and it’s still this place that’s miserable, we are told, it’s going to hell in a handbasket, ‘Why don’t we do something for Africa?’ Rock stars are resurrecting their careers on saving Africa. And yet, it’s sort of like the poor in this country, we’ve thrown everything, we’ve given them the kitchen sink after throwing it at them, and still have the poor and we still have the disadvantaged. At some point, you gotta get the money into the hands of the people who are going to use it for investment and growth, not welfare, and you have to take it out of the hands of these despot warlord thug dictators in these countries that are getting their hands on it, people like Mugabe in the former Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe.
Africa has become a worldwide welfare state with the welfare recipients primarily made up of the thug dictators running some of these countries and oppressing their people. There is no reason in the world today why the vast majority of the Third World is in one continent. There’s no reason for it whatsoever. But I’ll tell you who you can blame, Al Haji, guess who’s preventing development there? Our good old American environmentalists, our leftists who prefer squalor to advancement, to running water, to electricity, ‘because that requires fossil fuels, Mr. Limbaugh, and that’s destroying the planet.’ So people in Africa have to live in pigsties because they’re not allowed to develop the country by Americans and liberals all over the world who are standing in their way. George Bush has gone over there, and he has said, ‘We got new rules. We’re going to continue to give you the aid. You gotta show us something for it,’ and he’s being celebrated upon his arrival. The Drive-By Media here cannot understand it. But the people of Africa do. They understand what’s happened with his presidency in that regard.
But the idea here that Barack Obama is the magic elixir that you can assign to any problem and it automatically gets fixed — you know, the thing that worries me in a situation like that when you have people of a cult, nothing ever does have to get fixed. It’s sort of like liberals and their good intentions. That’s all that matters. All you have to do is, ‘I want that problem solved, Mr. Limbaugh! I can’t bear to see people –‘ Okay. Well, good, we’ll spend some money on that. Good. And they think the problem is solved. Their good intentions got it done. So you can throw under the canvas, the black canvas that is Barack Obama any problem, and you make him the solution to it, and whether it gets solved or not, you think he’s great because you’ve made him into what he is, not him. That’s the appeal here. Look, Al Haji, nice to have you on the program. I’m glad you called.