RUSH: Well, this is hilarious. So much of what’s in the news today is hilarious. David Axelrod, who is the Karl Rove of this administration, except that Axelrod is loved and adored by the Drive-Bys, responding to the somewhat overwrought critique that Obama did not properly stand up to hostile Latin American leaders during a trip to the region this past week, has accused critics, Axelrod has, of missing the point. ‘I think some people misinterpreted what happened this past weekend,’ said Axelrod. ‘I think the real message of what happened this past weekend with the Cuban regime’s response to the president’s decision on remittances, or the overtures from President Chavez, I think, what has happened is that anti-Americanism isn’t cool anymore.’ Good grief! It’s just the opposite! Anti-Americanism has never been more cool, especially at the White House, where it is now policy. Yes, I said that. Anti-Americanism is now policy. It is cool at the White House, where it’s policy now.
Anti-Americanism has never been cooler. Look at the polling data from the left, or of the left in this country. Look at the smiling faces of Daniel Ortega and Hugo Chavez and all the other leaders down there at the Summit of the Americas. It was not refuted whatsoever. The way they define anti-Americanism is just amazing. And what do I mean by anti-Americanism? Well, Tim Geithner today, the diminutive Treasury secretary, who I think they’ve told to man up out there, because he went before Congress today, he started to sound like an Arnold Schwarzenegger tough guy in his diminutive egghead Ivy League frame, started explaining the bailouts and the stress tests and so forth, and he said that the health of banks will not be the only requirement for TARP money repayment. This was a congressional oversight panel with Geithner, and I have a question here from Representative Jeb Hensarling of Texas. ‘If there are firms that wish to repay taxpayers their money, if the taxpayer money is at risk, if their relevant regulator certifies that, commensurate with safety and soundness of the financial institution, they can return that capital –‘ in other words, the bailout money, ‘– if this is an accurate assessment of your position, why wouldn’t you take the money back?’
GEITHNER: In those conditions, we would welcome it. But I just want to underscore what’s really important. And I said this at the end of my testimony, but I want to underscore it again. My basic obligation and our responsibility is to make sure that the system as a whole, as a whole has the ability to provide the credit that recovery requires. And so we need to make a careful judgment about what policies are going to best promote that objective. Under the laws and conditions established in the Recovery Act, the judgment about when institutions can repay is a judgment that the federal banking agencies have to make.
RUSH: Wrongo. It’s totally up to him, and he’s the federal banking agencies. The Treasury secretary has total power. So the bottom line is they’re trying to construct a circumstance here where they don’t want to take the TARP money back, and there’s a reason for that. Obama wants control of the financial system, and you heard about these stress tests. We never had stress tests before. Stress tests have been created by Obama, and I think there’s a new name for them: possess tests. When the banks perform or have these stress tests performed on them, and they don’t show up as strong and as healthy as Obama would like, then he’s just going to possess them. Wall Street Journal has a great piece today, that this is back door nationalization. Back door nationalization will make Obama the owner of the financial system. Common shares in banks have voting rights. Preferred shares don’t. What Obama wants to do is convert the government’s preferred shares to common shares, which magically help with stress test results by increasing capital on the bank’s balance sheets.
Now, these stress tests were designed by Obama. They never existed before. They’re a creation of the man who stands to become an owner of the financial system. You just heard Geithner say it. The individual banks and their health is not what we’re looking at here. We’re looking at the health of overall system. So if banks fail the stress test, Obama can then possess them. All he has to do is convert preferred stock to common stock, and the government has voting rights in the way these banks operate. The results of the tests will determine if Obama can possess certain banks. Now, weak banks are going to fail them. They’re going to be run by Obama. The possess tests — and these results are coming soon, and I have to think that Obama’s new friend, Hugo Chavez, is going to be watching, hoping America will be a country like his. Here’s the next part of Geithner’s testimony. The question from Hensarling, ‘Just to understand, then, there will be other considerations besides the individual institution’s financial stability?’
GEITHNER: The critical thing we care about is whether the system as a whole is in a position where it has the capacity to support the credit the recovery requires. That’s the ultimate test.
RUSH: There isn’t any credit. This is another thing that’s going uncommented upon. The banks are not extending credit. Credit is in the process of being tightened, all of this by design. All of this to create even more chaos, to promote economic uncertainty, to promote and prolong the economic recovery, because the chaos is what Obama needs. He needs these banks to fail these stress tests so that they become possess tests. Now, at the same time this is happening — and this is crucial, ladies and gentlemen — at the same time all this is happening, the Obama crowd says they’re probably going to need more bailout money. Right? Now, how logically can they claim and say that they need new bailout money when they won’t accept the return of old bailout money? What these hearings were about today was essentially Geithner telling the Congress that even if banks want to give back the money, it’s not that simple ’cause they don’t want to take the money back. They do not want to give up control over the US financial system. This is key to understand here.
If they say they need new bailout money and there’s supposedly $135 billion left in TARP that has not been allocated yet, then why do they need new bailout money if they won’t return, or accept the return of the old bailout money? Some of the banks that you’ve been told to hate are lining up asking big government to take the TARP money back. They’re begging, they’re pleading, take back the billions, we’re solid, we don’t need it anymore. But Obama’s bailout brigade says no, and at the same time, team Obama is setting up to spread around more bailout money. It’s clear as a bell to anybody who wants to admit what is happening. At the risk of repeating myself here, folks, I think this dovetails right here with this Axelrod comment that anti-Americanism is not cool anymore. It’s just the exact opposite. You can say that anti-Americanism is a lot of things, but I’m going to tell you, the government controlling the financial system and owning common stock in banks and the government having voting privileges in private sector banks, that’s not American, as we have understood it. Anti-Americanism is sprouting up all over the world, and it has been for a long time. The only different thing about it today is we have an American president sympathetic to it, wants to understand it, probably agrees with half of the anti-Americanism out there, at least judging by his reaction to its expression at the Summit for the Americas.
See, I think there’s a method to this madness. I really do believe that these stress tests are the forerunner of what I am calling possess tests. I think this whole damn thing has been orchestrated just like they orchestrate hits on other areas in the country in order to distract people. See, you cannot have real change without a crisis. That’s a fact. And these stress tests of the banks are meant to identify a bank in crisis as defined now by Obama and Geithner. There’s no crisis without the test. The test is hypothetical information about a future economic downturn. That’s what the test is. Now, the Feds had extensive information on all those banks. Geithner’s been gathering it ever since TARP, loads of information. The White House, the Treasury department knew the test parameters. I’m guessing they put together a test, knowing in advance that some of these banks are going to fail. An added bonus is that you get a stock market that sort of seesaws up and down and doesn’t appear to gain any traction on the upward swing.
I know it sounds conspiratorial, but if it makes sense, you might bounce it off of some people you know or in the banking industry. There’s just been too much talk about these stress tests and the Drive-By Media go, ‘Oh, the stress tests, we just love the stress tests, he really cares.’ But too much turmoil has been caused here. Why tip everybody off on the Sunday shows that these stress tests were coming and that they weren’t sure of the results? I mean that was the administration’s line on the Sunday shows a couple days ago. They knew that would roil the markets, and it did. They knew that would roil the public. Why wasn’t all this done in secret? And now I think I know why Geithner was indispensable. He’s an insider on this. He’s willing to play this game as ordered by the Obama administration.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Orlando, Florida, as we go to the phones, Chris, thanks for the call. It’s nice to have you here with us.
CALLER: Hey, almost-got-me-fired dittos, Rush.
RUSH: Almost got you fired? How did that happen?
CALLER: Ummm.
RUSH: Listening to my show at work?
CALLER: Sir?
RUSH: Listening to my show at work?
CALLER: No. No. No. I’m a Baptist minister who used to be professional wrestler and I was going to try to do a Dan’s Bake Sale and the St. Pete Times got hold of it, and I found out how many Democrats I had in my church.
RUSH: Ahhhh. Okay.
CALLER: I loved you on Greta Van Susteren last night, absolutely loved you, and no one else is putting the conservative views out there like you are.
RUSH: Well, now, wait a minute. I think that’s not quite fair. The Drive-By Media has anointed the daughter of John McCain, Meghan McCain, as the new voice of the Republican Party. You gotta give Meghan McCain credit here, Chris. You can’t leave here out here.
CALLER: Ah, she cannot even hold your shoes, Rush.
RUSH: (laughing)
CALLER: She cannot even do that.
RUSH: I was being facetious.
CALLER: Well, my question for you —
RUSH: You know what they ought to make Meghan McCain a judge at the next USA pageant. She’d fit right in.
CALLER: And she’s blonde. Yeah, that would work. My question is, great Maha Rushie, in the future, what will our relationship look like with Cuba and Venezuela and North Korea and China in one or two years, under the Obama administration?
RUSH: Well, I don’t know one or two years is going to be a perceptible change in the relationship. In fact, I’ll tell you, instead of answering this, you cited my appearance on Greta last night. I was on for the first 18 minutes of the show. I did a phone interview. By the way, we have been trying for a year — and I’ve left this up to other people, it would have been done in two weeks if I’d have done it myself. But we’ve been trying for a year to get this studio wired to do TV out of the studio, so I don’t have to go to some cheap, Podunk little studio that can’t handle the audio requirements I have over in West Palm Beach. I’ve left this up to other people, we’ve been dragging on for a year over a stupid purchase order of $19,000. Eventually we’re going to get this done, and I won’t have to do telephone interviews. (interruption) Next month? I’ve been hearing that for a year.
I’ve been hearing ‘next month’ for a year, and then the testing will start, and it won’t work for six weeks. But nevertheless… (interruption) I am not ragging on the staff. I’m not ragging on the staff. It’s just another one of these things where if you don’t do it yourself, it just doesn’t get done as quickly. When you leave it up to a bureaucracy, has to go through 15 different departments. Nineteen thousand bucks! It has to go all these bureaucratic departments and people signing off on this and that and the other thing. So, at any rate, at some point we’re going to be able to do live TV out of this studio. ‘Well, why can’t you just use the Dittocam?’ We might even be able to use the Dittocam, probably gonna upgrade the quality of the camera, but it’s not the Dittocam. It’s not the camera right now. It’s the bandwidth necessary and the cabling that we are going to have to install. It’s the cabling that we’re installing here. At any rate, the foreign policy aspect. Greta asked me last night, ‘What do you think about the handshake between Obama and Hugo Chavez?’
RUSH ARCHIVE: Well, you know, a handshake is symbolism. There are things about this trip, Greta — and thank you for having me on — that are far more troubling. But a handshake is just a symbol. I mean, you almost have to do that if you’re going to go into a room where Chavez is at one of these meetings. You have to either say in advance to the planning people, ‘No handshakes or I’m not going in there.’ My biggest problem — and it’s something that’s very troubling to me, and I think it’s very reckless — is President Obama is willingly putting himself in the presence of people who despise this country, who make no bones about it. These people are dictators; they are people who hold political prisoners; they squash public dissent and so forth, but he’s acting as though they are close associates and good friends.
He sits around and smiles when they trash and destroy and criticize and rip the United States of America, particularly Chavez and Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua. If it were me — if I were president of the United States, and I had to go to one of these things, knowing full well the den of thieves that I’m going to be sitting around — I’m not going to sit there and take it if somebody starts trashing my country. When President Obama spoke after the 50-minute lunatic diatribe of Daniel Ortega and said, ‘I’m just glad he didn’t blame me for things that happened when I was only three months old,’ it was all I needed to hear. I think we’re looking at a person with a God or messianic complex, certainly narcissistic, who looks at these trips — not just to Central America, South America, the G20 in Europe; looks at all these trips — as making it about him.
The United States was an immoral and unjust country until he was elected. Now all of a sudden it’s on a bright path to a bright future, when millions, 55 million Americans didn’t vote for this, and have just the opposite fear. They have the concern that this country has seen its better days, and President Obama wants to tear apart the foundation that built this country into the greatest country in the world, American exceptionalism, and remake it in an image that’s closer to something that would be approved of by a Daniel Ortega and people like Hugo Chavez. When Chavez gave him the book… I mean, this is a book that, I think, blames the United States for virtually every evil under the sun, largely evils committed by the very people who have been running these countries into the ground — socialist dictators, Marxist dictators of one another.
And the president says, ‘Oh, I like to read. I like books,’ and so forth. I don’t think he’s going to find much in that book that’s foreign to him. I don’t think he’s going to find much in the book that’s strange to him. You know, his good friend William Ayers in November of 2006, went down to an education forum that was held in Caracas, Venezuela; and praised the socialist economic system of Hugo Chavez, which basically teaches that capitalism is slime, that America is slime and militaristic and responsible for the problems of the world; the purpose of education is to teach religion, anti-capitalism, anti-militarism. I mean, it’s very frightening, and I think it’s very naive, and I think what Vice President Cheney said tonight with Sean Hannity is right on the money. It’s reckless. He’s sending a signal around the world to people who intend us and other people harm, that he doesn’t see much wrong with them and that he thinks he could forge an understanding with them because he is somehow morally superior to every previous president and administration that we’ve had in this country. So it really troubles me. I try to find humor in everything, and I think to start telling jokes about this and being humorous about it too much would be to ignore the seriousness of it all.
RUSH: That is one of the answers last night when I was on Greta that Chris in Orlando wanted to ask me about and said he was very praiseworthy about the foreign policy effect. And he said, ‘What’s going to be the status of our foreign policy with Venezuela, Cuba, China, and some of these other countries in the next two years?’ It’s hard to say, but Obama’s moving at a breakneck pace. He’s just lightning fast on all of these things. I think it really boils town here, folks, to the fact he is trying to chum it up with these people that despise us. Why, I don’t know. But he does believe that this country was immoral and unjust before he was elected. His wife has said so in so many words, about him and about them and so has he.
And now all of a sudden America’s great, America’s moral, and he’s around apologizing for everything we’ve done. Vice President Cheney is right. The people who intend us harm hear this, and they see a sap. They see a weakling. They see someone who can be exploited. You know, these dictators and thugs by definition thrive on being hated. They do not want to be loved and adored. They end up being, if they have the cult personality of a Stalin or a Mao, they have the ability to be loved by the people they’re imprisoning and holding in tyranny, but they want to be feared. They want people scared to death of them! Obama’s… (chuckles) He’s doing the best to indicate that he’s got some problem with his own country and not with them. So I think the United States looks ripe. You know, for as long as we have been around, ladies and gentlemen, there have been countries that have wanted to wipe us out or cut us down to size.
It’s the nature of the beast. It’s human nature. People say, ‘How come people around the world can look at the goodness of this country and not want to emulate it and become our friend?’ There is this thing in the world called evil. And when you couple an unquenchable thirst for power with evil and the desire to control people’s lives — which is found all throughout the intellectual elites in this country, on college campuses, for example, the desire to control people’s lives — that’s why socialism, communism is attractive to these people. It’s because they think they’re going to be above the ones that are controlled. They’re going to be the ones that are doing the controlling. So people who have long sought to cut this country down in size or even defeat it, have to be looking at developments in this country with the new president, saying, ‘Our task just got a little easier.’