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RUSH: Well, the insanity that we spoke of yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, continued this morning with a campaign speech by President-select Barack Obama, a rehash of campaign rhetoric from his successful presidential campaign on the economy. And it is pure insanity, as we discussed yesterday. Great to have you here, Rush Limbaugh, at 800-282-2882. The e-mail address, ElRushbo@eibnet.com.

I just heard something that, frankly, surprises me. I was watching a little post-speech commentary from our friends in the Drive-Bys, and Nina Easton, who is a Fox News contributor and analyst. She writes for Fortune magazine, so she writes for a business audience. She used to be the Washington bureau chief for the Boston Globe. She got out of there in the nick of time before the New York Times company had to declare bankruptcy. They own the Boston Globe. At any rate, she said that the business community has signed onto this. The business community is all for the Obama economic plan, because of the tax cuts that are in, for business, in the Obama economic plan. Now, when the speech began, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 50. As we speak now, ladies and gentlemen, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is down about 95. So it has fallen 45 points, yet the business community is behind the speech, behind the plan from the get-go.

There were no specifics announced today. And, by the way, the Drive-Bys — I have a very, very detailed story here. The Drive-Bys are not concerned yet, but they’re starting to note that there haven’t been any specifics in any of Obama’s economic plans, and today’s speech (we have sound bites of it coming up) was just another series of airy platitudes rehashed from the campaign, but essentially what we’re going to do here and what’s happening is we are being led by somebody who knows nothing about economics, and his speech today was tantamount admission of that. We’re told, though, since he doesn’t know anything, that his economic team is superb, his economic team is made up of, you know, a bunch of Big Government types. We are told that the economy is so bad that only government can get us out of this, only the government can get us out of this, ladies and gentlemen. Then he said later on in the speech that we are going to have to get back to a new economy for the twenty-first century where hard work is once again rewarded. Now, I about choked, ladies and gentlemen, because that’s the exact opposite of what his plan is. His plan taxes the hardworking, his plan taxes achievers. That’s where he’s gonna get some of the money that he’s gonna give away to people who aren’t working and to unsuccessful businesses.

This Nina Easton comment, that business is on board here, well, I looked at some of the plan. They did get somewhat specific in the $340 billion tax cut plan. There aren’t any tax cuts in there. There are welfare payments for unemployed people, people who don’t pay taxes at all, income taxes, and there are business write-offs for businesses that lose money. But there’s no tax cuts for people who are stimulating the economy. Who stimulates the economy, by the way? How many deficits have we been running as a nation, budget deficits, annual, for how many years now? And yet this recession still happened. We’ve already tried this. It was just two months ago that we tried this very circumstance. We have been stimulating the economy in a robust way, according to the way the left defines it, and still The One tells us it’s getting worse, and just like they sold the first $700 billion, ‘We gotta do it now, we can’t wait, it’s a crisis, we cannot wait any longer, our country can’t afford to wait,’ and we are being micromanaged and hurried into a blunder of historic proportions.

This plan, if it happens, has been designed by Obama, is Jimmy Carter times a trillion. This is basically printing as much money as humanly possible. Because, folks, we don’t have the value to back up the money that we are spending, we’re not borrowing as much as we’re going to spend. The ChiComs have sent out little warning notices saying, ‘Hey, you know, we may not continue to purchase your debt anymore,’ and it’s a bunch of foreign nations that have been purchasing our debt, T-bills and all that. We’re having to print this money, and we are unloading it. We’re going to unload this printed money on favored industries and unions and populations to promote left-wing policies and entities, such as the green movement, Democrat mayors. We’re going to hand out massive welfare payments to nontaxpayers, and we’re going to call it a middle-class tax cut. Jimmy Carter times a trillion. If this happens, as envisioned by Obama, this is gonna go down as the biggest economic blunder in American history.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: It was only two days ago, ladies and gentlemen, that we heard these words from the President-select, Barack Obama, explaining why he has refused comment on the war between the Gazookas in Gaza and the Israelis.

OBAMA: I think the need to adhere to one president at a time is particularly important.

RUSH: ‘The need to adhere to one president at a time is particularly important.’ By the way, rockets were fired at Israel today from Lebanon. When rockets are fired from Lebanon, it’s the Hezbos. So the Hezbos and the Gazookas are now teaming up against the Israelis. Hezbollah. Hezbollah has announced that they are ‘investigating,’ this is an O.J. Simpson line. Hezbollah is ‘investigating’ who fired the rockets. The Drive-By Media lapping up, saying, ‘We’ll help try to find out who fired the rockets from Hezbo locations in Lebanon.’ Now, let’s hear 9-A again. This is Barack Obama two days ago.

OBAMA: I think the need to adhere to one president at a time is particularly important.

RUSH: This morning at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, Barack Obama, the president-select, gave a major economic address.

OBAMA: Only government can provide the short-term boost necessary to lift us from a recession this deep and severe. Only government can break the cycle that are (sic–is) crippling our economy. That’s why we need to act boldly and act now —

RUSH: We do that already.

OBAMA: — to reverse these cycles.

RUSH: We did that already!

OBAMA: That’s why we need to restart the flow of credit and ensure the rules of the road that will ensure —

RUSH: We did this!

OBAMA: — a crisis like this never happens again.

RUSH: But it will happen again because recessions are cyclical. So here he is, basically, with a lie. This is a lie. It’s not just wrong. Folks, this is not something that’s just wrong. This is not a disagreement among people. This is proven fact. Governments do not ‘break’ economic cycles. They cannot. If government could do that, there would never be a recession! There would never be depressions. It would be smooth sailing 24/7 if government had this kind of power, but it doesn’t. Well, it has the power to interfere, but it is not the means of ‘stimulating the economy.’ Who stimulates the economy? Who stimulates it? What will be the definition of economic recovery, the real definition of economic recovery? Will we say after Obama’s first… Well, forget Obama for a second. Let’s go back to the first $700 billion last October. We had to have that done, too.

It was a crisis! It was an emergency! Only government could do it. We had to do it then. We had to get credit flowing. We had to do all those things. We were told that that was the solution. That’s just a couple short months ago, and here we are back and now we’re going to do it again only this time over a trillion dollars. How come the economy is not fixed? No, no, I’m not trying to be facetious. I’m asking this as a serious question: Why isn’t the economy fixed? If government doing this… Now, follow me. I know I’m too logical here, and I know, ladies and gentlemen, that being right does not win elections. But that’s not what this program is about. This program is about informative, accurate, truthful education, and a good time had by all at the same time. So I’m not advising anybody on anything. We need to be as well informed as possible, and taking what Obama just said here, ‘Only government can do this.’

Well, we’ve done how many bailouts, now? We’ve 700 billion here, 350 there. We’ve had a stimulus package or two since last spring. If government is the only entity that can break the cycle, why is the cycle not broken? And why are the markets not reacting as though the cycle has been broken? If government, if what Obama just said here — and believe me, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. That’s what I’m trying to illustrate here. He literally does not know what he’s talking about. He does not understand economics. He understands the empowerment of government. He understands the growth of government. He understands the strengthening and the enrichment of the Democrat Party for 50 years. That’s what he understands. He does not understand the economy.

If all of this government spending, all of this printing of money, all of this borrowing of money, all of this recycling with bailouts here and bailouts there, why aren’t the markets going, ‘Yeah! Okay!’ Why isn’t the recession over, if only government can do this? Well, the reason the recession isn’t over is because government doesn’t fix recessions. Who stimulates the economy? What are we hoping happens here? Who are the people that make the country work? That’s the better question. Who are the people that make the country work? It’s all of you. It’s all of us, gainfully employed; seeking to improve our lives; creating new jobs, ideas, inventions, services. Economic growth is more people earning, earning higher wages and paying higher taxes in the form of lower rates, you know, more tax revenue. Who stimulates the economy? Is it the person who hires people? Is it the person who gives them raises? It’s the person or the organization that creates ideas and products that people want to buy.

Those are the people who stimulate the economy and what’s happening to them in Obama’s plan? No tax cut for them. Obama, by the way, in his speech today said everything’s on the table. No, it’s not because he didn’t mention tax cuts. The tax cuts he has mentioned prior to today are just Joe the Plumber wealth transfers, to people who are not working, or who have lost money in business — and the people paying for it are those who have persevered, worked hard, continue to employ people, and are showing a profit. Those are the people who stimulate the economy and those are the people who are gonna get punished. Liberal Democrats believe in the downtrodden. They believe everybody’s a victim. They want as many victims as possible. That’s what Obama’s speech was about today, was making as many of you think you’re a victim of whatever, capitalism, and only your benevolent government can fix this. ‘We need to restart the flow of credit, restore the rules of the road.’ Um, the government that destroyed the housing market — the government that had a large role in destroying the domestic auto industry — is now saying only they can fix things. Here is yet another Obama excerpt.

OBAMA: We have already tried the wait-and-see approach to our problems, and it is the same approach that helped lead us to this day of reckoning, and that is why the time has come to build a Twenty-First Century economy in which hard work and responsibility are once again rewarded.

RUSH: How is hard work…? (laughing) I just had to laugh. ‘Time to build a Twenty-First Century economy in which hard work and responsibility are once again rewarded’? That’s only one way to do that, and he’s not doing it, and that’s cut their taxes! The people he’s talking about are paying 50% of their income in taxes. Let me ask you a question. Those of you who are employees, let’s say that your boss pays you a certain amount of money and government tax law requires that of what you make, over 50% of it will be deducted from your paycheck in addition to the taxes you pay that you don’t see. Like at the gasoline pump, at the grocery store, wherever you pay sales tax. The people that own and operate businesses face those tax rates of over 50%: state, federal, cost of doing business tax, whatever the taxes are.

What if you, as an employee, had to pay 50% of what your boss pays you in taxes? What would you do? Would it be profitable for you to continue to work, or would you be livid? The people that are going to be paying, in part, for this brilliant, compassionate stimulus; are those who are already doing the hard work and are not being rewarded for it. They’re being punished! It is the slackers. It is the people who have not run businesses that are earning money that are going to be bailed out. It’s the people who have not played by his precious rules that are going to be bailed out by the people who are obeying the rules and who are paying the freight.

He’s right to say we need to get back to the day where hard work and responsibility were rewarded. Unfortunately, he lives in a political party that does not believe in that philosophy at all, otherwise he would be talking about cutting taxes. He would understand where the real stimulus occurs in an economy and where this comeback will occur, because it always does. Do you know what the average lifespan of a recession is over the course of United States history? Twelve to 24 months. And then, magically, we start to come out of it, without government being involved. This is going to delay that. This is going to prolong and sustain this recession. And Obama is out there telling everybody it’s going to be a long time and it’s going to get worse before it gets better.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Barack Obama said in his speech this morning that we’ve already tried the wait-and-see approach to our problems, and it’s the same approach that helped lead us to this day of reckoning. You know, we’re trying to be respectful of The Messiah and the new president-elect and so forth, but frankly that’s balderdash. We have not tried waiting and seeing. We have been in crisis mode for six years. For six years our friends in the Drive-By Media have been trying to convince you that we are in a recession. For six years they’ve been trying to do that, all for the express purpose of getting rid of Bush and Republicans and electing Democrats. Finally, a recession happened. We have been in crisis mode since last summer. We’ve been in crisis mode perhaps even longer than that with the presidential campaign. But certainly we have been in crisis mode since October. We have not been in a wait-and-see attitude. We have not been in a laissez-faire attitude whatsoever.

We have been hands-on to the point that government has never been this hands-on. We’re getting close to already outspending what FDR did in the New Deal. Obama calls it wait-and-see. The same approach helped lead us to this day of reckoning? No. The approach that led us to this day of reckoning is the approach defined by Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, by Barney Frank of Massachusetts, by Franklin Raines and Jim Johnson at Fannie Mae, by Angelo Mozilla at Countrywide, by ACORN, the community organization group that pressured banks all over the country to make loans to people who couldn’t afford them, and that whole game plan was set in motion by none other than Jimmy Carter. It was ignored for a while, then picked up by Bill Clinton and intensified in the late nineties. We are where we are precisely because of meddling liberal Democrat members of government and, sadly, a lot of Republicans in the last three to four years — they have to be included in this as well — for this irresponsible spending that has been taking place. And once the government spends it, the private sector doesn’t have it.

The private sector is where stimulus takes place. The private sector, the average American, that’s who makes the country work. If the government and its actions guaranteed economic prosperity, Wall Street should be throwing parties, because we have spent already close to a trillion dollars in stimulus, and isn’t it amazing how no impact. In fact, it’s gotten worse, they all admit that it’s gotten worse, which means that we need to spend another trillion and we need to overspend by a trillion dollars a year perhaps the next three to four, while at the same time they tell us this is the recipe for prosperity. This is a disaster. This outdoes anything Bernie Madoff ever even conceived of doing. And like Bernie Madoff, the future victims of this are so excited their tongues are practically on the floor as they suck up all the excitement out there. (panting) They pant away. They can’t believe their good fortune in having America loved once again, somebody who can speak, somebody who will not embarrass the United States. May destroy it, but, he will not embarrass us. Here’s more. This is Obama, the president-select, ramping up the crisis mentality.

OBAMA: If nothing is done, this recession could linger for years.

RUSH: Stop the tape a minute. Recessions come out of their cycles in 24-month periods if you just leave them alone. Wait and see is what works. It’s the average length of time for a recession in America. Depression is a different thing. What now, Snerdley, what’s the problem? Hm-hm. I’m not suggesting benign neglect. I am suggesting that we have the undertaker in charge of the body before it’s dead. Think of Washington as a giant funeral home, and we are the living, and the undertakers are not changing their jobs. Their jobs are to prepare bodies for burial. We are on the conveyor belt heading into the funeral home. Most of us are smiling like stupid idiots at the prospects for our future much all because some guy who can put ten words together, which say nothing, makes them feel good. All right, here’s the rest of this bite.

OBAMA: — reach double digits. Our economy could fall $1 trillion short of its full capacity, which —

RUSH: It already has. You know, I could stop this after every word and analyze it, but I’m not going to do that because I don’t want to appear hypercritical of the new president because, quote, we all want him to succeed. Take me off the bus, folks. I don’t want to be on the bus to success if this is how it’s defined. Why should we want somebody to succeed who doesn’t have the slightest clue what he’s doing and doesn’t understand economics, why should we want him to succeed? I’ll tell you why our guys are saying that because they are a bunch of pantywaist cowards who are afraid to stand up for their own principles because they’re afraid if they do so, they’ll be called racists or roadblocks or gridlockers, even though they don’t have the ability to stop anything.

OBAMA: — place into more than $12,000 in lost income for a family of four. We could lose a generation of potential and promise —

RUSH: Twenty-five years.

OBAMA: — as more young Americans are forced to forgo dreams of college or the chance to train for the jobs of the future. In short, a bad situation could become dramatically worse.

RUSH: See? Ramp up the crisis, your kid can’t go to college, wink-wink, that might be the best thing for your kid, by the way, is to find some other way to get educated rather than by a bunch of liberals. And of course you won’t get job training, nope, it’s going to get bad out there. And then Obama — see if this doesn’t sound like to you he’s admitting that the plan won’t even work.

OBAMA: This recovery plan alone will not solve all the problems that led us into this crisis.

RUSH: What?

OBAMA: We must also work with the same sense of urgency —

RUSH: Yeah?

OBAMA: — to stabilize and repair the financial system we all depend on.

RUSH: We did that.

OBAMA: No longer can we allow Wall Street wrongdoers to slip through regulatory cracks.

RUSH: They did.

OBAMA: No longer can we allow special interests to put their thumbs on the economic scales.

RUSH: This economic recovery alone will not solve all of the problems that led us into this approximate crisis. It won’t? Ha. The Messiah is confirming what I have said in my analysis, it isn’t gonna work. But here’s the reason it isn’t gonna work. We must also work with the same sense of urgency to stabilize and repair the financial system. Folks, we did that, it’s called TARP. We did that. We have stabilized the financial system, don’t you know? Pay no attention to the stock market, pay no attention to office rentals being down, pay no attention to the reality, we fixed it. That’s what the $700 billion bailout of the financial — we bailed out a bunch of banks, we made ’em whole, we bailed out AIG, bailed out a bunch of people. And banks, of course, did exactly what I thought they would do, they didn’t lend the money. (laughing) They saved it. Sarbanes-Oxley was supposed to fix all the ethical stuff, the Enron stuff, yeah. Well, it didn’t work because people took their companies private to avoid Sarbanes-Oxley. Some of them did. Those that didn’t take their companies did hurt. Folks, we have bailed out the financial system. This is what I’m trying to say. If government action fixed this, we should all be throwing parties because we should be confident that if 700,000 people lose their jobs next month, it doesn’t matter ’cause the government has acted and that’s the fix.

The Wall Street Journal has a column today. Just this paragraph. He wants to talk about the Wall Street wrongdoers and so forth? ‘The Congressional Budget Office reports that some $240 billion of the new spending,’ bailout money, ‘is for the bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Congress will also want to keep in business Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as part of its nationalization of the mortgage market. So that $240 billion to bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac may never be repaid, although only last year our Solons and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson were ensuring us that Fannie and Freddie were no threat to taxpayers.’ Fannie and Freddie were no threat to taxpayers, they’re fine. Well, we just bailed them out $240 billion and they’re not going to have to pay it back. Think of it in Madoff terms. Think of it as Congress having stolen from the taxpayers, as a result of its Fannie Mae scam, nearly five times what Bernie Madoff made, have stolen from his clients. And yet the very people that led to the problem, now fixed it by — a scam five times the size of Bernie Madoff’s, and Obama today says, ‘No longer can we allow Wall Street wrongdoers to slip through the regulatory cracks.’ We put all this to song, ladies and gentlemen, to illustrate exactly, ladies and gentlemen, just what the gambit here is. They love the crisis; they want the crisis to continue. They’re going to continue to stoke it, as Barack Obama sings in the song Recession.

(playing of Recession song)

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