RUSH: A couple of audio sound bites this afternoon in Nueva Orc at Columbia University, CNBC held a town hall event called Keeping America Great, A Summit, with Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett and Microsoft founder Bill Gates. The moderator, Becky Quick, says, ‘This is a very pivotal moment in history. People have a lot of questions about the economy, about our entire system of capitalism. Mr. Buffett, over the course of the last year was there ever a time you had doubts about capitalism and about our way of life?’
BUFFETT: No, there was not a time. If there had been last September when we invested a lot of money that was when the country was looking into the abyss and, you know, the money was flowing out of money market funds, the commercial paper market had died and everything and we — we put $8 billion at work in just a matter of a few days then. So I never lost confidence in the system. This country works. You know, we’ve got 200 years of — of proof.
RUSH: You know, this is just… I’m not going to sit there and refute the brilliance of Warren Buffett as an investor and strategist, but I have to question the common sense the guy has. We are in the midst of an assault on capitalism! Buffett may have confidence in it but his president doesn’t believe in it. Here’s Becky Quick again. She says to Gates, ‘Bill, what do you think about my question?’
GATES: This country still has the best universities, the best science, and, you know, we’re going to tune our system of capitalism. The fundamentals of the system — a marketplace driven system where we invest in education and a great infrastructure for the long term — that’s continued. And, you know, I’ll bet there’s inventions that took place even that fall in that darkest hour. People are working on new drugs, new chips, new robots and things that will make life better for everyone in the decades ahead.
RUSH: All right, well, somebody needs to get hold of Obama and tell him something because Buffett says he has faith in capitalism and Bill Gates says he has faith in capitalism. I wish Becky Quick would have asked both of them: ‘Do you see any capitalism going on out there? You think that there are inventions and you think that there’s new drugs and you think that there are robots and you think all of this, but where is it? And who’s got the jobs making all these things that you say are being produced by our capitalist markets?’ But she didn’t ask that. You know, they’re in awe when they get these two guys up and ask them anything. Just like the aliens in V, this new ABC miniseries. They tell the press, just like Obama, ‘I’m not going to answer any question that makes us look bad. You can’t even ask a question that makes us look bad!’ Well, these guys don’t want to ask a question that might make these guys look bad, so that’s why they’re not gonna say, ‘Do you see any capitalism, Mr. Buffett?’
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RUSH: Say, let’s grab Gates again. I have a question here for Bill Gates after his sound bite. His answer to the question, ‘You’ve had your doubts about capitalism, about our way of life. Everything okay out there?’
GATES: This country still has the best universities, the best science, and, you know, we’re going to tune our system of capitalism. The fundamentals of the system — a marketplace driven system where we invest in education and a great infrastructure for the long term — that’s continued. And, you know, I’ll bet there’s inventions that took place even that fall in that darkest hour. People are working on new drugs, new chips, new robots and things that will make life better for everyone in the decades ahead.
RUSH: All right, now, here’s my question for Bill Gates and Microsoft. If working on things that make life better for everybody in the years ahead, as Gates said — if we got people doing that — then why are we punishing them? Why are we targeting them? Why do we regulate ’em? Why do we obstruct them? Why do we denounce ’em? Why do we point fingers of blame at them and say they are the people ruining the country? Why do we besmirch them? Why do we impugn them? Why do we raise their taxes? If these are the people doing all the creating and inventing out there, why in the world are they the enemy? They are the enemy of the Democrat Party and this administration! Why do we punish, smear, and denounce the inventors, producers, job-creators, and wealth creators?
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RUSH: Madison, Alabama, Lynn, welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Rush!
RUSH: Yeah!
CALLER: Hi! It’s my birthday. This is the best birthday present I’ve ever gotten.
RUSH: Thank you very much, and happy birthday to you.
CALLER: Thank you, thank you, thank you. I won’t say how old I am. I’ll keep that. Some girls have to have their secrets. But anyway, I was calling to tell you what’s going to happen at the summit they’re going to have.
RUSH: What’s that? What’s going to happen?
CALLER: First they’re going to bring all these brilliant people in, and then Obama is gonna say that he has a solution. And he’s going to make us wait a month for that. Then he’s going to say that he heard that somebody stole some paper clips from one of the companies, so there was some corruption going on, so he’s gotta find another way, and then he’s going to just put it off indefinitely.
RUSH: Well —
CALLER: Just like he did in Afghanistan.
RUSH: Well, no, no. He can’t on this. On this he’s gotta have some sort of announcement. If I understand the guy, what he’ll do is target who he thinks are the real enemy here, and that is small business. You know, in answering this Bill Gates comment, you look at, folks, at the Democrat Party enemies list. It is Big Oil, it is Big Pharmaceutical, it is Big Retail. It is any big capitalistic enterprise that earns a profit! And, of course, me, which is a capitalistic enterprise that earns a profit. But aside from that, all conservatives are his enemies. What he’s going to do, if he does anything… Let me put it a different way. It’s meaningless. I just went through the list of all the summits he has had. He had a budget deficit summit in March. It’s growing at an all-time high! He had an Afghanistan-Pakistan policy summit in May.
He does nothing but have summits! He convenes people in the White House, he sends them into ‘work groups,’ the sycophant media with their tongues on the floor going (panting) excitedly report all this going on as though something’s been accomplished when nothing ever is. But everybody feels like something has happened, that Washington is working on the problem. Washington is working on the problem! Oh, that should make everybody feel better.