RUSH: So much of what the Drive-By Media does today is just template. It’s just navel gazing. And it’s going to be the death of them. This CNN chick at one of these rallies, screaming, ‘There aren’t any African-Americans! There aren’t any African-Americans here!’ It’s straight out of the template handbook. She could have been talking about the CNN Newsroom, for crying out loud. ‘There aren’t any African-Americans here. There aren’t any African-Americans here, and there aren’t any immigrants! Oh, this is horrible. This is just white people. Ohhhh,’ and it wasn’t. But again, remember, now. All of this newfangled political involvement with Obama, which is cult-oriented, personality-oriented, well, that was magic! That’s just what America needs, all these people being involved yesterday somehow a threat. Make no mistake, folks, the Democrat Party, the White House, the Drive-By Media frightened, worried about what went on yesterday. Nancy Pelosi yesterday in Oakland, California, KTVU Channel 2.
PELOSI: What they want is a continuation of the failed economic policies, uh, of President George Bush. This initiative is funded by the high end. We call it astroturf. It’s not really a grassroots movement. It’s astroturf by some of the wealthiest folks in America to keep the focus on the tax cuts for the rich, uh, instead of for the great middle class.
RUSH: So if the money doesn’t come from George Soros, then it’s disqualified. If the money doesn’t come from ACORN or Steve Bing or Harvey Weinstein or some of the other giantly filthy rich Democrat donors then somehow it is illegitimate. Plus, Pelosi lies. The initiative was not funded by the high end. Astroturf, Bill Clinton owns astroturf. Bill Clinton had astroturf in the back of his El Camino and told the nation about it. She said they want a continuation of the failed economic policies of…? No. Madam Speaker, they want a cease and desist to what are guaranteed failed economic policies brought forth by you and President Obama. These people see their future being mortgaged. These people do not want a bankrupt United States of America, and that’s what you’re bringing them. And you’re chipping away at their liberty and their freedom, and you want to create circumstances that will make more people than ever before dependent on the government. I mean, the outrageous insults aimed at American citizens by people like Nancy Pelosi and the Obama administration are in and of themselves outrageous and unbecoming to elected officials.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: We’re going through the audio sound bite roster of Drive-By Media coverage of the tea parties yesterday. Here’s a montage of correspondent Dan Harris’ report on ABC’s World News Tonight.
HARRIS: Cheered on by Fox News and talk radio, the hundreds of tea parties today were designed to protest the bailouts, the stimulus plan, and President Obama’s budget. [snip] But critics on the left say this is not a real grassroots phenomena at all, that it’s actually largely orchestrated by people fronting from corporate interests.
RUSH: Stop the tape! Doesn’t that sound exactly like what Pelosi said? These people are stenographers. They’re nothing but stenographers for the Democrat Party. Fueled by? People fronting for corporate interests? Now, get this next point. This next point, this is also going around. ‘While the Boston Tea Party in 1773 was about taxation without representation,’ that’s where this starts.
HARRIS: The Boston Tea Party in 1773 was about taxation without representation, critics point out that today’s protesters did get to vote, they just lost. What’s more, polls show most Americans don’t feel overtaxed. Tea party organizers say that will soon change, and that what we’re seeing today is the rebel yell that signals a conservative movement rediscovering its voice.
RUSH: It’s not just about being overtaxed. It’s about the country being ripped apart, the foundation being torn down and rebuilt. It’s about the country going bankrupt. Now, this point about the Boston Tea Party, 1773, ‘taxation without representation.’ As you may remember my having said — and I’ll say it again — I admire Charles Krauthammer like I admire few people. If I didn’t have my own brain, it would be a toss-up as to whether I would want Krauthammer’s brain or Justice Scalia’s brain. I’m happy with my brain, but if I had to go in there and get a new one, it would be a toss-up between Scalia and Krauthammer.
Yet I must take a small diversion from comments Krauthammer made last night on the Fox All Stars on the Special Report, Bret Baier’s show on the Fox News Channel. On the tea party protest, Krauthammer said, ‘I don’t think it’s a movement. It’s a protest. And it’s a reaction to the fairly radical social agenda that Obama has unveiled ever since his inauguration,’ and that’s key because the radical socialist agenda is something that has been unveiled since the inauguration. It was not part of the campaign that people voted for. But I still maintain that most of the people that voted for Obama did so on the basis of cult. You had your Democrat Party loyalists, people that hate George Bush and hate Republicans and so forth. People that voted for Obama on substance are very, very few. But here’s what Krauthammer said next.
He said, ‘But I would remind the people at the parties that, unlike the original tea party, this one is taxation with representation. Obama was elected by the American people — against my sage advice, I would add, but no one listens to me — and his program was pretty open. It was not him. They elected a Democratic majority,’ this is Krauthammer, ‘large Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, and what they have as a result is a government that is ready to use the tax code to confiscate as much of your earnings as it can.’ Okay, I want to address that. Two points about that. It is said that Obama ‘is doing what he said he would do,’ which is not quite what he said he would do. Obama’s massive deficit spending is the opposite of what he campaigned on. In fact, Obama has said numerous times that every dollar would be accounted for.
He was going to go through the budget line by line, and wherever there was fraud and waste, it was gone. And during the campaign he attacked the deficit spending of George W. Bush, which — while nothing to write home about — there was still far less, far less spending by Bush than what Obama is doing now. And the public is extremely concerned about what this is going to do to the country and their children’s future. What happened yesterday at the tea parties is totally rational. It is a legitimate reaction. And I might add the protests were civil, and they were lawful. Now, there’s also — and again, I guess you could say I’m taking issue with Mr. Krauthammer here, but I don’t intend that to be the case. My own thought here is that, ‘Okay, Obama won. He’s got big majorities. He can do what he wants to do.’
No, folks. There is a limit, and it’s called the Constitution of the United States. Winning big majorities doesn’t give you the right in this country to ignore the Constitution, to rip it apart, to pretend it doesn’t exist or to rewrite it. There’s a basic my understanding here about American government, frankly. No disrespect here intended to anybody, but the Constitution is not a document about majoritarianism. It embraces it. I guess aspects of it, including the establishment of the House of Representatives. But that’s not the defining aspect of the Constitution. Majorities do not rule absolutely. We are not a democracy; we are not a pure democracy. Majorities do not always have limitless power to do what they want to do.
The Constitution is actually a document that rejects pure democracy by virtue of checks and balances and the creation of the House of Representatives. So, to say that Obama within the presidency and that the Democrats took Congress with huge majorities so therefore all of this is to be expected? Well, this does not give Obama and the Democrats carte blanche to ignore the Constitution’s limits on their power and to make systemic changes in our form of government, which is what is happening. And this is why so many people are upset. It’s not a pure democracy, and large majorities do not mean you get to ignore the Constitution of the United States. These protests that happened yesterday, and they’re going to be ongoing, are about abusive government.
Abusive government can take on many forms, and has, under the less-than-100-day tutelage of Barack Obama, certainly in this administration. They’re going after the individual. This administration is targeting the individual. This administration is targeting the private sector with a vengeance. This is not a direct comparison to the Boston Tea Party. That was a revolt against far less than what’s going on right now. Taxation without representation is one thing. That was a smidgen of a problem compared to what’s happening now. But attacking thematic differences like this ABC report did misses the substantive point. You know, yesterday somebody threw a box of tea bags, a box of tea over the fence at the White House. The Secret Service moved in there, sent in a tiny little robot to check it out. They had to do that.
They moved all the protesters. The Secret Service did a good job cleaning it up, figured out what it was, and let everybody back to their original protest positions. But still, it’s quite funny to me when a box of tea thrown over the White House fence can shut down the place for a while. They sent the press back to the pressroom. The Drive-Bys out there covered it, ‘Oop! Oop! Something just came over the fence! You guys better head back to the pressroom!’ There are the Drive-Bys running for cover from a box of tea! (laughing) I just had the greatest thrill with that. Now, more audio sound bites. Here we have… This is one of the bites everybody in the tea party movement just livid about CNN. Correspondent Susan Roesgen was live at the Chicago Tea Party. Here is a portion of an exchange that she had with unidentified tea party protesters. It will be followed by the anchor Kyra Phillips in the studio defending Susan Roesgen. She starts out by saying to a tea party participant, ‘Why are you here today, sir?’
MAN: Because I hear a president say that he believed in what Lincoln stood for. Lincoln’s primary thing was he believed that people had the right to liberty and had the right —
ROESGEN (screaming): Sir, what does this have to do with taxes?
MAN: Hold on. Let me finish. I —
ROESGEN: What does of this to do with your taxes? Do you realize that you’re eligible for a $400 —
MAN: Let me finish my point. Lincoln believed that people had the right to share in the fruits of their own labor and that government should not take it, and we have clearly gotten to that point.
ROESGEN: Wait! Did you know that the state of Lincoln gets $50 billion out of the stimulus? That’s $50 billion for this state, sir.
MAN: Ma’am? Ma’am, I… Can you stop this, sir? Hold on.
ROESGEN: Okay, Kyra, we’ll move on over here. I think you get the general tenor of this. It’s anti-government, anti-CNN — since this is HIGHLY promoted by the right-wing conservative network Fox — and since I can’t really hear much more, and I think this is not really family viewing, I’ll toss it back to you, Kyra.
PHILLIPS: Wow. That is a prime example of what we’re following across the country here.
RUSH: You CNN people, you have become — even in the media — a laughing stock. Your ratings are plummeting, so much so that even other Drive-By broadcast publications are reporting on the plummeting ratings of CNN. ‘Do you not realize, sir, that your state’s getting $50 billion in stimulus money?’ How much of it is he going to get? How much is he paying? Wait a minute! He’s paying for that, Susan. Part of that 50 billion we’re either going to have to print or we’re going to have to borrow and this guy is going to get taxed to pay for it, and so are you! But it’s ‘government,’ and government is wonderful, and government is just the best thing. ‘Obama cares… Don’t you realize they’re going to get a $400 tax credit?’
She was clueless. This was a reporter. I am guessing, in addition to showing up with an agenda, she literally has no idea why these people are there. She has no intellectual understanding of why anybody can possibly be upset today, none whatsoever. ‘It’s anti-government, anti-government. It’s anti-government; it’s anti-CNN! It’s brought on by the right-wing network Fox.’ Oh, yeah, and it wasn’t family viewing. I’ll tell you what’s bugging these CNN people is they know nobody watches them and yesterday was a clear example of why. They look at Fox’s numbers and in the universe of cable news, CNN’s becoming a nonfactor. This is just one of the reasons why.
I mean, for crying out loud. Susan Roesgen, do you really expect the American people to start prancing around and throwing parties based on how much borrowed, printed money their state governments are going to get in a so-called misnamed stimulus program? When’s the last time I saw the American people get happy about that. I wonder if she could go out to Illinois and find anybody, just asking them in the opening of the question, ‘Sir, do you care about politics?’ ‘Yes, ma’am, I do.’ ‘What are you happy about today?’ Well, I’m happy ’cause my state’s going to get $50 billion from the federal government.’ There is nobody that thinks this way, because most people know that $50 billion ‘from’ the federal government started with them. It was taken by the federal government, in this case Obama’s going to have to print it or borrow it, because we don’t have the money.
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RUSH: You know, actually I’ve been thinking about this during the break. The CNN reporter, Susan Roesgen, in her own twisted way, she’s right, because if you object to government abuse, then you would object to CNN as well, since CNN is nothing more than the voice of government. CNN is nothing more than the voice of Obama. So if you object to government abuse, then yeah, of course you would object to CNN. So if you are anti-blacklisting by homeland security, if you are anti-socialism, if you are pro-life, if you are anti-national health care, if you are anti-appeasement of our enemies, then you would be anti-CNN. Where is Candy Crowley when we need her? Where is Frank Sesno when we need him? I mean, he had a thing for Gorbachev, but other than that, Frank was pretty good. Where are the Bernard Shaws who fled from the al-Rashid Hotel in Baghdad? Where are all the greats? But Susan Roesgen is a good reporter in the sense she’s got great eye makeup. Fabulous eye makeup, did you notice? That counts on television.