RUSH: I have come to a conclusion. Inevitability in the Democrat Party is a death knell. Hillary was inevitable, correct? And where is she? Her latest appearance has been in a JibJab video, and old Bill is out there warning of growing polarization in the country. How can we get more polarized? And these people are the ones that actually started it back in the nineties. Poor old Obama, now I guess the tag of inevitability has accrued to Obama, and he’s screwing everything up now. Yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, if I say so myself, I had a pretty decent observation. By the way, the oil price plunged today, and the stock market is way up. Bad news for the Democrats. (laughing) Not good for them. Anyway, yesterday when the economic news was just horrible, you had the fed chairman up there testifying before the Senate, you got the president trying to shore up the economy, you had people being kicked out of their houses ’cause they can’t pay their mortgages. There’s a great story in the LA Times or somewhere today, I’ll find it. A big story on how home prices, the average home price in California has fallen 23 or 27%, but prices are still not low enough for renters to be able to buy. And the line in the story is, ‘and Congress has done nothing about it.’ Well, what are they supposed to do? This dovetails precisely with what I was talking about yesterday. Congress is supposed to help you buy a house even now after Congress helping a lot of people buying a house led to the subprime mortgage problem that we’re having? It’s unreal out there.
Anyway, while all this was going on yesterday, there’s Obama popping up somewhere doing a speech on Iraq and rephrasing and refining his position on this, and it was strictly a speech to the far left-wing fringe, which is upset because he said he’s gonna consult the chief joints of staff and then the commanders on the ground and may not pull people out of there as quickly as possible. Now he’s pulled from his website all the references to the fact the surge won’t work. I pointed out all this economic news is going on, he’s making a speech about Iraq and nobody cares about Iraq right now because we’re winning. In fact, I actually think that the Drive-Bys are screwing Obama, unintentionally. The Drive-By are not reporting how well we’re doing in Iraq, therefore he doesn’t know how well we’re doing, so he comes off as a know-nothing. I mean, the Drive-Bys are inadvertently damaging this guy. I wouldn’t say it’s gotten to the point yet of destroying him, but he’s in deep doo-doo out there. Everybody knows who’s paying attention that Iraq is doing well, the surge is working well, and Bush is talking about accelerating the troop withdrawal. There’s Obama giving a speech about Iraq as though it’s 18 months ago. Now, why? Obviously nobody on his staff reads the papers. Well, they do read the papers, and the papers and the Drive-Bys have nothing in the news about Iraq, so he’s stuck in a time warp. The Washington Post editorializes today with a point that I made, that this is really tone deaf, what he did yesterday, and he made the same impression on the editorial writers at the Washington Post.
Now, yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, as you recall when the New Yorker cover cartoon was blowing up all over the place, and the Obama campaign was talking about how upset they were about this and it was just uncalled for and all the yada yada yada, I pointed out that the only people that get mad over cartoons, stupid cartoons, are Muslims, radical Muslims. Here’s Obama out there, fresh off a cover cartoon alluding to him satirically as a Muslim and his wife is a terrorist and he’s getting upset about it. He’s still upset about it; he’s still talking about this; he’s whining and moaning about it. And now he’s changed his tack. His tack now is this upsets Muslims, American Muslims and it’s just not fair, it’s just not right. Let’s go to the audio sound bites. Last night on Larry King Alive, King said to Obama, ‘That New Yorker cover depicts you and your wife, you dressed in a Muslim outfit, your wife in a kind of military outfit –‘ come on, Larry, she’s dressed as a terrorist. She’s got an AK-47, a bandoleer of bullets over there, looked like Angela Davis. What is this, military outfit, Larry? Say the word, ‘terrorist.’ The New Yorker portrayed Michelle (My Belle) as a terrorist. Osama Bin Laden’s picture hanging and the flag burning in the fireplace. ‘What did you make of that, Obama?’
OBAMA: I know it was the New Yorker’s attempt at satire. I don’t think they were entirely successful with it, but, you know what, it’s a cartoon, Larry, and that’s why we’ve got the First Amendment, and I think the American people are probably spending a little more time worrying about what’s happening with the banking system and the housing market and what’s happening in Iraq and Afghanistan than a cartoon. I’ve seen and heard worse. I do think that, you know, in attempting to satirize something, they probably fueled some misconceptions about me instead, but, you know, that — that was their editorial judgment, and, as I said, ultimately it’s a cartoon, it’s not where the American people are spending a lot of their time thinking about.
RUSH: What do you think they’re thinking about? They’re thinking about Iraq? Everybody’s talking about this, Obama, in the places that you need to be interested in. Everybody’s fascinated by it because in the Drive-Bys your pals are worried that the satire didn’t come off as satire ’cause they didn’t put me anywhere on the cover. And so it’s upsetting to him, it bothers him a great deal, so he says it’s just a cartoon and all that, but he doesn’t think the satire was pulled off by the people at The New Yorker. Then King said, ‘Well, considering that, there’s a lot of e-mails going around, it gets rather terrible. A Newsweek poll shows that 12% of America believes that you are a Muslim, 26% believe that you were raised in a Muslim home, a lot of misinformation, how do you fight that, Obama?
OBAMA: Well, you know, by getting on Larry King and telling everybody I’m a Christian and I wasn’t raised in a Muslim home. And I Pledge of Allegiance to the flag and, you know, all the things that have been reported in these e-mails are completely untrue and have been debunked again and again and again. You know, this is actually an insult against Muslim Americans.
RUSH: Here we go.
OBAMA: It’s something that we don’t spend a lot of time talking about and sometimes I’ve been derelict in pointing that out. You know, there are wonderful Muslim Americans all across the country who are doing wonderful things, and — and for this to be used as sort of an insult or to raise suspicions about me I think is unfortunate. That’s not what America is all about.
RUSH: Bull. It is totally what America is all about. America is all about political satire, this is totally America. (laughter) I’ll tell you what he’s doing here, my good friends, Obama, with this latest comment saying it’s an insult to Muslim Americans, he’s trying to incite them. He’s trying to incite Muslim Americans to also join the chorus of those complaining about this. And, of course, the irony here is, ladies and gentlemen, he thinks American Muslims ought to raise hell about a cartoon that is intended to lampoon us. This cartoon is intended to make fun of us conservatives. Are we out there whining about it? (crying) No. We’re reveling in the fact that they didn’t pull it off and everybody on their side is worried that the idiots that make up the majority of people in this country aren’t going to have the sophistication to understand it. So he hopes that this will end up inciting Muslims if he can convince them that this is lampooning them.
Now, there have to be, in the Obama campaign, there have to be some really perverse minds at work in this campaign, constantly trying to manipulate the public based on emotions, such as race or religion, desperation, you name it. And the reason for that is when you lack a good record — well, when you lack a record, period, 143 days, you’re a community organizer in Chicago working for a corrupt voter registration unit called ACORN, when you have a record that insignificant and then you have to embark on a campaign to conceal the real you, such as your buds Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright, this is what you do. You try to divert attention with emotional appeals and rants, and that’s what they’re trying to do here. And it’s just funny that this topic will not go away. Why do you think that the Drive-Bys are so obsessed with this and why do you think Obama is and why do you think nobody is really letting go of this? There is an answer to this, ladies and gentlemen.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: We are such a terrible country we are, ladies and gentlemen. I don’t know how collectively we get up and look at ourselves in the mirror every day. After all, look at this Reuters headline: ‘Obama Not Closing US Racial Divide,’ according to a Poll. You see how horrible we are? ‘Americans are sharply divided by race ahead of the first presidential election in which a black candidate will represent a major party, a New York Times/CBS News poll showed on Tuesday. The poll found that blacks and whites hold vastly different views of Senator Barack Obama … and are also divided on the state of race relations in the United States, the newspaper reported. In the survey, 83% of black voters had a favorable opinion of Obama, compared with 31% of white voters,’ and then Reuters is pointing out what they think of their readers. Here’s what Reuters thinks of their readers. The next line is this: ‘Obama will face John McCain, a white Republican senator from Arizona, in the November 4 presidential election.’ (laughter)
I’m not so sure. I got a blog story here with a couple of other elements to it. Apparently, eight superdelegates are preparing to change their minds here, away from Obama. You know, there is tumult on Capitol Hill in the Democrat Party over Obama. I had this story in the stack yesterday. I didn’t get to it, but I remember the premise of it, and that is they don’t like it. The campaign is disjointed. They don’t like the fact he’s moved the DNC to Chicago. They don’t like the fact they’re not involved in it, and they see it as an elitist campaign, and the Obama people quoted in the story say, ‘Well, sorta right. When we roll into Washington, we don’t want to owe anybody there. We don’t want to have to pay anybody back when we get there.’ The story goes on to point out that’s not how it works in politics.
You don’t get elected president or nominated president by your party in a vacuum. (interruption) Jimmy Carter tried the same thing. Yes, I know. Jimmy Carter tried the same thing. That’s why there’s nothing universally new here. There’s no change. There’s nothing that’s not been seen or done or said before by any political candidate. Anyway, ‘On the status of race relations, 59% of black respondents thought they were generally bad [in this country], compared with 34% of whites who thought [they were generally bad]. The nationwide telephone poll of 1,796 adults showed that 39% of blacks said there had been no real progress in recent years in getting rid of racial discrimination. Only 17% of whites said the same thing. Twenty-seven percent of whites said too much had been made of problems facing black people, while half of blacks said not enough had been made of’ barriers they face.
Half the blacks don’t feel that way. That’s right. Half the blacks do not feel that way. You would have to suggest, then, that that’s progress if half the blacks do not feel that way? Don’t report the half the blacks that don’t feel that way; they only report the half of blacks that do. ‘The poll was conducted July 7th through the 14th at a margin of error plus or minus three percentage points.’ So remember, now, the reason this headline, ‘Obama Not Closing US Racial Divide,’ this is one of the things that he lost early on in his campaign. He was the ‘post-racial candidate.’ He was going to ‘transcend’ all of this. His race was not going to be a factor. That’s how it started. That blew up when Reverend Wright’s videos hit the scene, and then the Obama campaign began using race as a campaign tool.
So many things that started out with this campaign have gone overboard or been thrown under the bus, not just his grandmother. But a lot of things, a lot of the premises. Everybody is living off of an image of Obama that doesn’t fit anymore. They remember the Obama of six months ago in the early primaries where he was transcending all these things where he was new and change was going to happen and revolutionary things were just around the corner, and now he’s just the same old regular Democrat presidential candidate; no different than any others that have come down the pipe — and I think as a result of this as a result of this, my personal opinion, ladies and gentlemen, if he keeps whining — and, by the way, this is The Oprahization of America.
You go on Oprah, and to prove your bona fides, you whine, you even cry a little bit, and you really pull it off if you get Oprah to cry over your story. You’ve hit a grand slam if you do that. So Obama is following that model. He’s out there whining. He’s asking for sympathy, either for him or all these Muslim Americans that are out there making these great contributions, and I think he runs the risk of people getting tired of him. You know, back in the early days of this, there was all this excitement, and everybody was wondering, ‘My gosh, this oratory! Is this going to be enough? Are people really going to vote on this?’ Because the comparison between an Obama speech and a McCain speech, there’s no comparison. Now all that glitter is gone, the aura is gone.
Now we use the term ‘messiah’ and ‘Lord Barack Obama’ as a joke. That’s how he thinks of himself, that’s how a lot of his campaign thinks of him that remember those days where those terms were applicable in, in a political sense. But now, I just wonder if people aren’t going to get tired of him as he’s just constantly changing his mind on things, becoming more like an average, run-of-the-mill, day in, day-out politician. Here. He was on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer last night, guest-hosting was Gwen Ifill, and she said, so, Obama, ‘People look at your shifts on issues from warrantless surveillance to gun control, and they say, ‘Who is this guy? What does he believe?’ How do you begin to, in this stage in your campaign, tell people who you are and have it stick?’
OBAMA: First of all, I — I do think that this notion that somehow we’ve had wild shifts in my positions is simply inaccurate. You mentioned the gun position. I’ve been talking about the Second Amendment being an individual right for the last year and a half.
RUSH: This is pathetic.
OBAMA: So there wasn’t a shift there.
RUSH: Pathetic.
IFILL: Campaign finance?
OBAMA: Well, campaign finance, there’s no doubt that that was a shift.
RUSH: Oh. Oh.
OBAMA: The broader point was if you compare sort of —
RUSH: Yeah.
OBAMA: — my shift in emphasis —
RUSH: Yeah?
OBAMA: — on issues that I’ve been proposing for years —
RUSH: Right, right.
OBAMA: — like faith-based initiatives.
RUSH: Right, right.
OBAMA: — which, uh, have raised, eh, questions, uh, uh, in the press —
RUSH: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes.
OBAMA: — you compare that to John McCain…
IFILL: And raised hackles among some of your reporters.
OBAMA: Well, raised hackles, uh, among some, uh, uh, in the blogosphere.
RUSH: This guy is sounding like he’s got less energy than McCain has. In recent sound bites that we have played of The Messiah, Lord Barack Obama, he really is really, really down speed. I’m listening to this, and I keep saying, ‘Come on, speed it up! Is the broadcast engineer playing games with the playback speed on this?’ But this is just a flat-out lie when he talks about his gun position. ‘I’ve been talking about the Second Amendment being an individual right for the last year and a half.’ For crying out loud, he came out in total support of the DC gun ban, and he called it constitutional; then when the Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional, he did a flip-flop. Here’s the thing. Gwen Ifill asks these questions, and then Barry answers them, but there aren’t any follow-ups. He’s allowed just to give his answer with no follow-ups. But they know. They know that he’s flip-flopping. They know that he’s making these changes in positions, and this question, ‘How do you begin to, in this stage in your campaign, tell people who you are and have it stick?’ Ms. Ifill, let me assist. The express purpose of the Obama campaign is to avoid people finding out who he is. Their goal is to make sure nobody knows for sure who he is, because he’s a radical leftist — and all this talk, these syllables, are meaningless. They are just calculated positioning ’cause he knows radicalism will not be elected president, just like Jeremiah Wright could never be.