So the economy stopped. The stock market started tanking. They knew Obama was going to win. They knew what his policies were. They knew because he had said them. During his transition, he did not alter any of his economic policies. He stuck with the campaign policies regardless of the tanking economy. To say that Obama has been in office only one month is not accurate from an effect on the world and an effect on the country standpoint. Barack Obama has been the controlling political authority on the economy for six months. You really think TARP 1 was developed without his or his people’s blessing? I mean his Treasury secretary Timmy Geithner was the Treasury secretary Paulson’s co-collaborator on the plan. Geithner too big to fail. Obama was in on the TARP plan, but wait, it gets worse. When Obama won the Democrat nomination and became the president-in-waiting, he had no idea the economy would weaken this much, this quickly. But I think he’s happy that it did. Not doing anything to change it. In fact, he’s continued to talk it down. He’s continuing to utter depressing statements about the future. He is encouraging such statements from his minions who appear on television.
Now, faced with that reality, faced with the reality that the economy was weakening at a rapid clip, what did he do? He stayed with his campaign promises. Income redistribution, alternate energy schemes, anti-business populism, universal health care. There are creeping stories today that people are starting to worry the economy is just not strong enough to start implementing all of these things. There is starting, ladies and gentlemen, to be to be some actual analysis of the damage that could be caused to this country by the implementation of the Obama agenda, given the economic crisis, and the fact that there is no effort, there is no effort whatsoever by the Obama administration to reverse the direction our economy is going. Don’t tell me the stimulus plan is that effort. Most of that money gets spent in 2010, and a lot of it will be spent by Democrat organizations like ACORN to further the reelection of Democrats. There is no stimulus in the stimulus bill.
Vice President Joe Biden on CBS last week was asked by a small business owner, ‘What’s in the stimulus bill for us, for small business?’ And Biden was clueless. He said, ‘Well, if you need to get to a business and you gotta use a bridge we’ll make sure the bridge works. And customers have to use the bridge and we’ll make sure the bridge works.’ There’s nothing in it for small business. There’s no stimulus in the stimulus bill. What we have from Obama is nothing more than what he campaigned on. The goals he established more than a year before the economy slowed down. Now, it is the Obama people saying that we conservatives have no plan. We are the party of ‘no.’ Have you ever heard the name Rush Limbaugh? That would be me and the administration is focusing now, ladies and gentlemen, on rule number 12 of Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. Cut off the support network; isolate the target from sympathy; go after people, not institutions, because people hurt faster than institutions. Well, I don’t hurt. I am not hurt by any of this. What this is, though, is cruel.
It is cruel because it is a game of manipulation emanating from the Oval Office. It is an attempt to distract Americans from the destruction of their ability to earn a living. It is an attempt to distract you from your plunging economy. It is an attempt to distract you from your ability to save for retirement and to pursue happiness. See, honest face-to-face discussions and debates are fair. I gave a speech at CPAC on Saturday, televised my first national address, address to the nation. In that speech were not just illustrations of what’s wrong with this administration and liberalism. There were solutions, solution after solution after solution, because conservatism is a solution. None of the things that I said in that speech are being repeated by the Drive-By Media which I knew would be the case, because face-to-face discussions and debates are not going to happen. Instead, Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals number 12 has been employed: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.
President Obama himself told Republican congressmen not to listen to me. I have been declared by Rahm Emanuel at Obama’s direction to be the de facto head of the Republican Party. Barack Obama, by his silence in all of this, has not fully rejected the implementation or contrivances associated with something called the Fairness Doctrine, so President Obama, or the administration, maybe not even him, rather than respond to the specifics of the contents of my speech on Saturday, this ongoing game of naming me the head of the Republican Party — and I’m going to retell you a story, ladies and gentlemen, before we go to the first obscene profit time-out here on the Rush Limbaugh program. It was a couple, three weeks ago and I’m not going to mention the name of the Republican leader in Washington who asked me, ‘Why do you think President Obama mentioned your name in that meeting with Republican leaders?’ It’s very easy to understand, it’s very clear. Obama hoped that some of those Republicans would walk out of that meeting and agree with him. Obama wants mainstream conservatism portrayed as fringe freakism, and he was hoping that somebody in that meeting, Boehner or whoever was in there would walk out and agree, ‘That Limbaugh, the kind of things Limbaugh believes shouldn’t be listened to.’ And this Republican said to me, ‘Come on, Rush, Obama’s not that calculating, he’s not that smart.’
My friends, the effort has only increased. I was right when I told this Republican leader that, and it’s happening right before our very eyes. We’ll have some comments as the program unfolds today and I’m sure you’re going to have your own comments and questions. But nevertheless, the point here is to take me — I’m happy about it, don’t misunderstand, I’m not complaining about it — the point is to take me, malign me, take me out of context, what I said, attach it to the Republican Party in general, because President Obama wants no debate, President Obama wants no discussion, President Obama, as has been his modus operandi since he got into politics: It’s not to level the playing field. It’s to clear the playing field. He has, of course, his army in the Drive-By Media assisting at every turn.
One more little tidbit here before I go to the break, and it dovetails with one of the points that I made precisely and continually at the CPAC speech and my address to the nation on Saturday: ‘Acknowledging that ‘tough times for America often mean tougher times for African-Americans,’ US President Barack Obama on Saturday called for more local and national engagement by fellow blacks. ‘You know that tough times for America often mean tougher times for African Americans. This recession has been no exception,’ Obama told the 10th annual ‘State of the Black Union’ gathering, noting that the unemployment rate among African-Americans is five points higher than the national average.’ This is just a shame. This man has pretty good communication skills. He could be inspiring these people if he chose to, he could be motivating. Instead, he encourages them to continue in their victimhood. He encourages them to believe they have no chance, no hope. The man of hope and change is telling them that in this economy, something that he refuses to address, something that he refuses to use the power of his office to actually address, to make better, rather than tell these people that they have it within themselves to be whatever they want to be because they are Americans, rather than tell ’em that, he gives them permission to sit idly by, watch all these horrible things happen to them, and then think that they’re just victims because of the color of their skin.
It is unfortunate that racism rears its head such as this so often in the Democrat Party, but it does. When this kind of thing happens it just breaks my heart. We live in the greatest country; we have the greatest opportunities here; we have the most freedom; we rule the world, and we have done so with less than 300 years. We’re not different than anybody else around the world. We’re no better as human beings. We don’t have different DNA. What we have are founding documents that explain why we exist as human beings. What is the essence, the spirit of our creation? It is the yearning to be free. We have a president of the United States, Barack Obama, who would rather depress the minds, the hopes, and the moods of people who are economically hurting rather than elevate them, rather than lift them up, rather than try to coach ’em, rather than encourage them, he does just the opposite, and it breaks all of our hearts because we want a great nation.
A great nation is compromised of individuals seeking excellence, pursuing ambition, whatever ambition they have, the best they can be. The more people in this country who are talked out of that, the more people who are told that’s not possible in the greatest country on earth, then the greater the odds our country will no longer be great someday. It just makes me livid; at the same time it almost brings me to tears to see how this party and this president are setting about making people feel hopeless, unless, of course, they turn to the almighty capital of our country, Washington, DC, and ask for assistance. It borders on, not crime, it’s just a shame to take people born in this country and to tell them they have no chance and no hope, when you claim to represent hope and change, is an irony that cannot go uncommented on.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I have to tell you people something. Bo Snerdley walked into my studio five minutes before the program today in tears. Bo Snerdley walked in here crying. I might tell you later why. If I do so, I must do it delicately yet boldly. But I’ll just give you a little hint. He said, ‘Why are you putting up with this when you don’t have to?’ and then he started launching, and he started crying. I felt like I was going to have to put my arm around him — and I’ve gotten I can’t tell you how many e-mails. Without… (sigh) I guess it’s not a surprise. I received a record number of e-mails, starting Saturday afternoon through today from people who saw my first address to the nation. Oh, and, by the way, understand that CNN was very upset that I kept talking about Fox during the CPAC speech. To those of you at CNN, I had no idea you were covering it. Nobody told me that CNN was going to cover the speech. Had I known that, I would of course have mentioned you and had some fun with you, too.
But nobody told me this. In fact, I regretted when it was over when I learned driving to the airport and I’m reading my iPhone e-mails and text messages. ‘Hey, Rush, CNN carried it.’ I didn’t know. No wonder Bill Schneider was so upset! He looked like he had swallowed that Russian Moscow hat that he wears all the time at the New Hampshire primary. Anyway, more Rasmussen polling data: ‘President Obama told the nation last week health care reform is one of his top three priorities. Forty-nine percent of American voters say the president should wait until the economy improves before moving forward on the health care front.’ It’s anybody’s guess when the economy is going to improve. Forty-nine percent say delay health care reform. It’s pretty damn close to 50-50. It probably is larger than the people who say do it because there are always some undecideds in these polls. His approval number is down at 58%. The Dow Jones has now fallen below 7,000 into the high 6,000s; and at some point that alone going to start causing some people to ask, ‘When is this going to stop? What is he going to do?’
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Here’s a story from the Associated Press. It’s an analysis piece by Charles Babington. The headline of this analysis piece is: ‘Playing To Win Could Be A Loser For The GOP — Can a strategy that helps Republicans get re-elected be bad for their party?’ is how this opens. ‘Some politicians think so, and they point to House Republicans’ solid opposition to President Barack Obama’s economic recovery plans as a good test.’ May I intercede once again and say there are no President Obama economic recovery plans. Let me make a point about this, ladies and gentlemen, because this ‘fail’ business is all over the place. It’s being maligned and distorted on purpose, and this fits with Alinsky rule number 12: Pick the target, choose it, freeze it, isolate it, demonize it. The left, Obama, needs demons. He will not debate his ideas with anybody, doesn’t want any of that going on. But to bolster my ongoing point that President Obama wants the economy and the market to tank — I don’t! I do not want any of that. I want this reversed. I know how it can be reversed. President Obama never talks about how we got out of the recession in the early eighties. He always hearkens back to FDR or recessions in the sixties, the Great Depression or what have you, but he never talks about the eighties. And the reason is, the way we got out of that recession — it was every bit as bad as this, in terms of economic performance — was tax cuts.
So Charles Babington here, Republican opposition to Obama’s economic recovery plan, there is no economic recovery plan. It’s a pork bill. It’s nothing more than stimulus. It has never worked anywhere in the world it has been tried. And, by the way, as I said Saturday in the speech, something you people in the Drive-By Media might want to focus on, has any of this, by these people, have any of their programs in the history of the Democrat Party, have they worked? We can’t find any evidence that they have worked. Have these people demonstrated at any time in the past that they have the intelligence, the skill, or the ability to manage all of these things? The longest war in this nation was the war on poverty. It wasn’t the war in Iraq; it wasn’t the war in Vietnam; it wasn’t the Revolutionary War; it wasn’t the Civil War. It was — and is — the war on poverty. It really started in the thirties but intensified in the sixties with LBJ. It has not been won, and the war on poverty cannot be won because the purpose of the war on poverty is not to defeat poverty. The purpose of the war on poverty is to sustain Democrat leadership of government. You take a look at what’s happened during the war on poverty, it has broken up American families, it has deprived people of their God-given potential. It has replaced husbands with government and sent husbands roaming the fruited plain seeking hedonism and so forth because the government ends up paying for the babies and their support.
There has been literally no change in the percentage of people in poverty throughout the war on poverty. We’ve transferred 10 to $11 trillion from producers to non-producers. What with charitable donations in this country, there ought not be any poverty. But President Obama’s not about fixing poverty. He’s not about economic recovery. If he really wanted the economy and the market to improve, he would be doing things opposite the way he is doing them. But I believe, and I mean this from the bottom of my heart, that he doesn’t mind the economy and market tanking right now. It only furthers his interests in assisting his panic-driven agenda in the short term. The worse it gets, the more prone average Americans are to get frustrated and scared and say, ‘do something!’ And Obama goes out and makes a speech and says, ‘We’re going to do something.’ ‘All right, we’re doing something!’ We’re not doing anything to make it better. We’re not doing one thing to improve the lives of average Americans and there are plenty of things that we could be doing.
Another thing — and this is crucial to understand — another benefit for President Obama and his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, who said a crisis is a terrible thing to waste, ‘I long for the day when the American people understand that the opportunity presented by a economic crisis.’ In other words, the opportunity presented by your suffering, by your economic decline, the opportunity presented by that is an opportunity for Democrats to grow their party, grow their power, and expand the control over as many citizens of this country as possible. That’s the opportunity Rahm Emanuel spoke of. But the longer this economic decline happens and the more days in a row that there are bad news, ladies and gentlemen, helps to undermine the people’s faith and confidence in capitalism, and then he can implement nationalized health care, he can further point out that Social Security doesn’t need to be privatized because we’re all going to be without retirement now anyway if we had privatized it, and that would be a lie because current retirees would not have been invested in any stock market of any kind given the proposals that were made, but regardless, I don’t want to get in too much minutia there.
The bottom line here, ladies and gentlemen, is that as the economy plummets, opportunities arise for Barack Obama, the Democrat Party, Rahm Emanuel, and all the rest. And, believe me, the more of you they can convince capitalism doesn’t work, the better for them. Yet it was capitalism that built this country into the greatest engine of freedom and economic opportunity in the history of human civilization. It is in the process of being attacked full-scale from the front right before our very eyes. Class envy is being used to further it. The more executives who are attacked — by the way, executives Obama hopes to emulate in terms of lifestyle — the more these executives, Wall Street and elsewhere, are attacked, the more people are supposed to say, ‘Yeah, you get ’em, you get ’em, you make ’em find out what it’s like to live like we do.’ After that happens, you ask yourself, is your life any better? Have you got another dollar in your pocket? Has Obama done anything to elevate your economic circumstance by punishing all these so-called evil rich people? Has he? No, your life hasn’t changed at all. In fact, your happiness derives from vengeance. Your happiness derives from schadenfreude, the feeling of happiness at the discomfort of others.
This is new and this is hope and this is change and this is uplifting? You’re supposed to finally get so fed up with capitalism that you don’t trust it. This would be a crying shame for the future of the country and all of the people who have yet to be born, because that’s whose wealth is being spent on all of this. Obama doesn’t care about paying for this. He knows he’ll never have to. If he was caring about paying for all this, he wouldn’t be spending 90% of it. He is spending wealth that has yet to be created, the wealth of your kids and grandkids and great-grandkids. Barack Obama has proposed more spending in six weeks than the grand total of all federal spending since the founding of the country. To say we don’t have enough money for things, to say that government is being short-changed, there’s more money than anybody can shake a stick at. Sad thing for us is nobody wants solutions. What are we doing to stop it? We don’t have the votes in Congress to stop it, and we don’t have the guts in Congress to stop it, not among all Republicans.
Let me see if I can articulate this for you. A concept, let’s call it boulders. Liberal Democrats, Obama and his minions and the Drive-By Media are speeding down the highway, implementing socialism as fast as they can, implementing an authoritarian collectivism, without having to stop and debate it, without having to stop and persuade anybody, they’re just unilaterally doing it. About all that can happen is some boulders need to be placed to slow them down so that at least there can be some discussion about it. The Democrats don’t want even to do that. In this so-called spending bill that has a recovery plan in it, there was no debate. There were no committee hearings. The traditional legislative process was put on hold. They wanted to keep it as quiet and secret as is amnesty bill of a couple summers ago. In the midst of all this, Charlie Babington at AP says, ‘The GOP’s united stand against the Democrat president seems to play well in conservative districts, but it could hurt their party’s national image and its efforts to regain control in Washington. House Republicans’ solid opposition to Obama’s economic recovery plans indicate that the Republicans are out of it.’
So what we have here, mainstream media continuing to smear and mischaracterize the Republican position by trying to convince Americans that the Republican Party and me want Obama to fail. I want free markets and capitalism to succeed. We want socialism to fail. The idea that winning could cause us to lose is an attempt by the Drive-Bys to continue to drive a wedge between recalcitrant, wobbly kneed Republicans into kowtowing and going along with all of this that’s being proposed. So maybe some of you Republicans would like to call and tell me what it is about the agenda you agree with, what it is you want to succeed. What is it that Obama has proposed that you want to succeed? And don’t tell me economic recovery. He has not proposed economic recovery. He has said he has an economic recovery plan. Well, his economic recovery plan, the so-called stimulus, we got $2 trillion of stimulus in this economy in the last year. It’s not working. You tell me specific agenda items of Barack Obama’s that you want to succeed. I’d like to hear what they are.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: We’ll go to phones. Don in San Francisco. Great to have you here, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Hello Rush. It’s Don Ainge calling, and I’ve been trying to get you for 22 years. My son Daniel, Danny, gave me your name in 1989 when he was playing for Sacramento, and you and I have met each other in Paul Westphal’s office and sat in a game together in Phoenix. So I’ve listened to you, and your talk that you gave was one of the greatest talks on the capitalist system that I’ve ever heard. I loved it and I listened to it and I watched it three times. What I loved about it was that you told the truth. You told the truth about us and you told the truth about the Democratic Party and what their real agenda is, and it has nothing to do with economy. It has to do with power. And there wasn’t one single word written in the Chronicle or the Mercury News or any paper here which I say is because they don’t want to print the truth.
RUSH: Well, it’s not just that. I mean, let’s face it, I am the sworn enemy of the Drive-By Media. There was nothing in it in the New York Times, and the TV Drive-Bys are simply focusing on me again, in greater detail and with greater elaboration my proclamation, and I’ll say it again, yes, I hope President Obama fails. I do not understand why this is controversial. It is not controversial in the least. If I do not believe that President Obama has the best interests of this country at heart, why should I hope he succeeds just because that equals the country succeeding? If I don’t believe that Obama’s success equals American success, why in the world should I agree with it?
CALLER: I loved the analogy on Madoff. Would we have agreed that we wanted him to succeed? I loved that when you said, ‘Would we want him to succeed two years ago?’ No, if we look back retrospectively, we would have wanted him to fail.
RUSH: Two years ago I’m sure that everybody involved with Bernie Madoff hoped that he succeeded.
CALLER: Absolutely.
RUSH: Let me tell you how this is being portrayed. When I say that I hope President Obama fails, what some people are saying, ‘Oh, Limbaugh wants the economy to fail? Limbaugh wants unemployment to stay high. Limbaugh wants the stock market to crash?’ No, my friends, and please don’t be so gullible that you would believe that interpretation of things. It’s the exact opposite that I want. I want people to have jobs. I want people to get the best and highest-paying jobs their ambition and desire will get for them. I want an economy that grows jobs and grows wealth, expands income. I want a stock market that’s going great guns because that’s where people’s investments are. I’m all for that. My fear is that what’s happening — look it, we’re getting a year of Obama as the controlling political authority — well, six months, at least. The stock market’s down almost 2,000 points since this man was elected. There hasn’t been any effort whatsoever to change course in one of the defining indicators of not just economic strength, but also now confidence that the American people have in their economy. Look, down 233 again today.
We’ve got newspaper stories about how the prime minister of Great Britain wants to talk to Obama and Obama’s open to it, about a global New Deal. Meanwhile, the European Union is falling apart. Angela Merkel says we’re not bailing people out here; we’re not going to bail out losers. The euro is in danger of being fractured. The European Union is showing some problems. All of this is playing into Obama’s hands. He’s making no effort to revive things. This is what people have got to understand. There is no economic recovery legislation that has been signed into law by President Obama. He just says that’s what it is, but it’s not. It depresses the economy, and the people who have skin in the game — an Obama term — money, people who have money in the game who are investing are shorting Obama’s stimulus package, just like they short sell the market, they’re short selling Obama’s stimulus, and they’re taking their profits and they’re running out of the market. The evidence is all around us that there is no economy recovery here. I want unemployment to go down. I want the stock market to go up and it isn’t going to happen with President Obama’s policies.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: By the way, folks, the Obama administration last Thursday proposed raising at least $31.5 billion dollars over ten years from oil and gas companies, reflecting a repeal of tax breaks for domestic production and new charges on oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico. In other words, the one relief in the economy, gasoline going from four bucks to two bucks, the one relief in the economy, low-cost fuel, Obama is targeting to bring the price back up. Don’t tell me he is about individual economic prosperity and recovery.