RUSH: Tri-Cities, Washington. This is Andrea. I’m glad that you called. It’s nice to have you here.
CALLER: Hi. First of all, Rush, you need to know I absolutely love your show. (giggles)
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: I have a couple questions for you. First of all, how is it that smart people can be so deceived by and ignorant about Barack Obama? The evidence is right in front of their faces and yet they don’t see it.
RUSH: That’s an interesting question. I’m glad you asked the question, because we have to define ‘smart.’
CALLER: (laughing)
RUSH: No, we really do, because you have your view of Obama.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: And you think it’s based on an informed analysis of what he says and what he’s done and what he says he wants to do.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: And then you have people that you also think are smart, who see the same stuff you do and either ignore it or think it’s good. And you wonder, how can smart people not see through Obama? Define that. What do you think ‘smart’ is? I don’t mean to put you on the spot. It’s not a trick question. What do you think ‘smart’ is?
CALLER: Oh, well, I have a couple friends who I think are very up on politics. I mean, they watch everything. They know what’s going on, and yet they see hope in Obama. They see that he’s bringing change — and, in fact, one of them, her husband runs as a senator. She and her husband see things differently, but, you know, she supports Obama. And I think, ‘Wow.’ It just shocks me. I would think that smart people would just be up to date on politics and know what’s going on, and yet the —
RUSH: Well, see, this is smart people, smart people, they may be smart, but there are so many variables here. For example, the Washington Post came out with a poll on Tuesday, and let me find it. I want to get this exact. Hang on here just a second. I didn’t print it out because I actually hadn’t intended to talk about. Eighty percent — 80% in the Washington Post poll on Tuesday, this ABC/Washington Post poll — blame banks, financial institutions, and corporations and George W. Bush for the economy we’re in today. Twenty percent do not. Seventy percent also blamed consumers. Now, I would imagine that the people you think are smart probably would agree with that.
CALLER: Uh-huh.
RUSH: They probably think the economy is rotten. And why do they think so? Smart people who think they’re smart, people you’re talking about probably watch a lot of media — they probably watch a lot of mainstream media, and they still believe what they hear and what they see there. And for the last six years, this economy, the media and the Democrat Party tried to create in people’s minds a recession. They tried to create pessimism in as many minds as possible about the future of the country economically, all for the purposes of winning an election in 2008. I think also you have people going along with a group. If you’ve got people saying, ‘Yeah, I see hope, and I see the change!’ then you got a cult following there. You have people who are devoted to the personality, and the popular sentiment is, ‘Obama is smart! Obama is fresh! Obama is neat! Obama is historical!’
CALLER: Mmm-hmm.
RUSH: And it’s really easy to get on board that. It’s difficult to resist that tug. It’s difficult to resist this the tug of popular sentiment, because you might get criticized.
CALLER: (chuckles)
RUSH: So where they may be smart, they could also be sellouts. They could be very ignorant. They could be very misinformed — and in this case, I think a lot of people are. It’s going to be a while before any of this starts to turn around.
CALLER: Yeah. I agree. That’s so sad. (chuckles) Well, my other question for you was about your Seep Number Bed. I know, totally off the wall, but my husband and I have huge back issues. I actually got in two car accidents a month apart from each other while I was pregnant, six and seven months pregnant and neither of them are my fault. That was a year ago and now I’m doing great, but my bed is not supporting me so it keeps just butting me down. Every morning I’m sore and my husband’s a police officer, and he has a horrible back, and so every night and every morning we’re just tossing and turning. So we’re looking at all these different beds, and we have to spend a lot of money, and so I want to make sure that we’re spending it in the right place.
RUSH: Mmm-hmm.
CALLER: And I know that you just talk so highly of your Sleep Number Bed, and I want to know: Have you tried different mattresses before the Sleep Number Bed and that’s what made you…
RUSH: Of course I’ve tried different mattresses before.
CALLER: I mean, you know, like high-end ones and (garbled)?
RUSH: I’m 58 years old.
CALLER: (giggles)
RUSH: Of course I’ve tried different mattresses. I’ve slept on floors. I’ve slept on sofas. I’ve slept on, you know, these little rafts that you go in a swimming pool on the floor.
CALLER: (giggles)
RUSH: I’ve slept in airplanes. I’ve slept everywhere.
CALLER: Okay. (giggles) Really, good, good mattresses, then. How do they compare with that Sleep Number Bed?
RUSH: Well, I’ve had mine ten years, and I’m just getting ready to get a new one, and I’ve had no thought of getting rid of it. I love it.
CALLER: Really?
RUSH: Yeah. Of course, now, you know what I would easily say is, ‘Look, Andrea, don’t tell anybody, but I’m lying about it. Don’t believe a thing I say, about the bed or politics. I’m just lying.’ Why…?
CALLER: (giggles) You’re just full of it.
RUSH: Watch that be reported in the Drive-By Media. (laughing)
CALLER: (laughing)
RUSH: No, I’m telling you, it’s great. I’m a firm believer in it, which is why they are a sponsor. I love sharing my passions, folks. I love coming to this program sharing my passions with people and many of those are our sponsors. But you can’t go wrong. Whether you need hard or soft sleep, this will provide it. That’s the whole point of it. You know, there are a lot of testimonials I could give you here. You’re just going to have to trust me. I can’t go any further with it (chuckles) but it’s great. It’s absolutely fabulous. I’m glad you called. Good luck with it.
RUSH: David in Nashville, you’re next on Open Line Friday. Hi.
CALLER: Dittos, Rush. A question. I don’t mean to be indelicate about the recent past of Natasha Richardson or anything, but, you know, in our rush to socialism and everything with socialized medicine… ABC had a, you know, kind of a chronological order of what happened on the day of her passing. And it said that they took her to one hospital in Canada and then turned around and shipped her to another hospital, both using an ambulance and it took three hours to find her a neurosurgeon, whereas in the US, basically, you know, helicopter service is available all over the place, and yet we’re rushing to kind of emulate that?
RUSH: Well, I’ve heard this. You know, there are people — not in the world of politics, by the way. You know, this is a story that was largely reported in the entertainment media, and the entertainment media, after the obligatory aspects of the story were reported, did start asking themselves, ‘Well, did the fact that the Canadian health care system is so arduous… Could it have been prevented had there been less time spent getting from the two hospitals?’ I read it was four hours. Maybe it was four hours total, one hour at a certain hospital where they figured out, ‘We can’t do what we need to do here,’ and they had to drive her to another one. There are a lot of factors in this if what we’ve been told is the truth.
What we’ve been told is that she had a minor accident and the ski patrol said, ‘You better let us check you.’
‘No, no, no. I feel fine.’
She went back to the hotel room and an hour later started feeling very ill and very sick, and that’s when they got people there. So an hour went by there, supposedly. Other versions of the story say it was pretty obvious at the outset. Regardless, it did take a long time for her to get to a place — and this was a five-star ski resort in Canada. It did take a long time for her to get to a place where the proper kind of treatment could be administered, and it was too late by the time she finally got there. Look, we had the member of the British Parliament, Daniel Hannan, who took Gordon Brown to task a couple weeks ago. He was on Sean Hannity’s television show and just begged and implored the American people: Do not go to a national health care plan, and he gave specifics of the problem.
We talked about them here. If you get breast cancer in the UK now, you’re basically told to stay home. They don’t have room for you. They don’t have the facilities. They can’t handle you. They give you some medication or do at home and that’s it. It’s an absolute mess, and the same thing happens there that will happen here. People who can afford it will have their own private doctors and private hospitals they can go to, and people who can’t will be stuck in the system. I had a call earlier asking, ‘How can smart people do dumb things?’ You take a look any government bureaucracy with which you are interfered, and you realize it’s an absolute… It’s the last thing in the world you look forward to… I don’t care if it’s a city, state, or federal agency you have to deal with; you don’t want to do it.
From getting your car licensed to your driver’s license on up, you don’t want to do it. Now you’re going to have Obama in charge of car warranties. Can you imagine getting your warranty honored if GM goes into bankruptcy through some federal government division or department? So imagine health care with this. But that even misses the point. We’re down here to a principle, and this is where a lot of people are frightened and scared. The notion of the government running one-seventh of a private sector, the best health care system in the world, the notion of the government doing it — whether they do it well or not, and they don’t do it well. In the old days this would have just been a no-brainer, slam dunk. ‘No way, no how! That’s not what America is about.’ Today you have… It’s arguable what percentage of the American people think the government should be doing everything. But it doesn’t matter because Obama does. Obama thinks the government is in charge of making this country fair.
Obama is about returning the nation’s wealth to its, quote, unquote, ‘rightful owners.’ Charles Krauthammer refers to it today this way: ‘Obama essentially wants to give you not an automobile warranty, but a life warranty.’ He wants to warranty your life. Anything that goes wrong, he will deal with. The government will fix. Anything — any injustice, any economic injustice, any kind of inequality, anything that’s not fair that happens to you — the government will make it right. That’s what he seeks. Krauthammer calls it ‘a great leveler.’ This is basically you have to destroy capitalism, you have to wipe it out, and then you have to take everything from everybody you deem that has too much, and then you have to redistribute. That’s what he wants to do, so whether it’s health care or what have you. In the old days, this kind of stuff, the American people would have stood up in righteous indignation and said, ‘No way.’ Now they may have voted for it.