RUSH: Let me ask you a question. How can the Obama regime and their lackeys in the media even be talking about an economic recovery if it at the same time Austan Goolsbee, the White House chief economist, says that not extending unemployment again will throw us into a depression and cost us at least 600,000 jobs? I mean that doesn’t compute, that doesn’t sound like the lingo of an economic 
recovery. Forget the insanity here of the notion that if we don’t extend unemployment again, in other words, if we do not continue to pay people not to work it will somehow cost us 600,000 jobs. Won’t it guarantee us 600,000 jobs lost if we keep paying people not to work? I’m sorry, folks, I can’t come here and suspend my logic. The logic on this program deflates some people. They live in this little cocoon, liberalism, easily inflated or penetrated, and when it is — and we do that daily here on this program — that just destroys them, because they actually believe this. ‘That’s right, Mr. Limbaugh, in order to save 600,000 jobs we must continue to pay people not to work.’
So Mr. Castrati, what you’re telling me is we need to continue to keep people unemployed, and if we don’t it’s gonna cost us at least 600,000 lost jobs? ‘That’s right, Mr. Limbaugh, makes perfect sense to me.’ Why? ‘Well, because it makes sense to me because people that I believe in are saying it.’ Well, it’s asinine. It’s so ridiculous I don’t know that I can even explain it. I don’t know that I have the ability to be that dumb. I don’t know that I have the ability to act this dumb. I still don’t think I’ve made this point as powerfully as it needs to be made. So over here we’ve got 9.6% unemployed. Let’s just say that’s ten million people just for the sake of it, arbitrarily chose a number. We got ten million unemployed, of the ten million of them let’s say 500,000 of them are about to lose their benefits after 99 weeks. So the White House is saying that we had better extend their unemployment — i.e., pay them to continue not working — because if we don’t we will lose 600,000 jobs. Sorry, I do not have the ability to get any stupider than necessary to explain this if you don’t already get it. I just don’t. Some have a problem with upward movement. I have a problem with downward movement. I can only be so stupid and ignorant and then I find a level I cannot get beneath, and this is one.
From The Politico: ‘Hopes for Cooperation Quickly Dashed.’ The headline is the story. ‘Hopes for Cooperation Quickly Dashed.’ Symbolism over substance is still the name of the game as the country still has no idea of next year’s tax rates, as we’ve just learned of almost $5 trillion worth of bailouts, the news is that the Republicans are mean. The Republicans have dashed all hope at common ground and bipartisanship. You want to hear the theme? It’s found its way into the media, the Democrat State-Controlled Media have a new mantra: the Republicans are holding the nation hostage.
SCHWARTZ: Republicans are holding these middle-class tax cuts hostage in favor of tax breaks for the wealthiest 1% of Americans.
MATTHEWS: Holding hostage the unemployment benefits.
PAYNE: Hold that hostage in order to keep tax breaks going.
STABENOW: They’re willing to hold tax cuts for middle-class families and small businesses hostage.
BLITZER: Holding the Senate hostage.
MCCASKILL: Will they hold the middle class hostage? Will they hold unemployment benefits hostage? Will they hold the START treaty hostage?
RATIGAN: The GOP is holding key legislation like the START treaty, or jobless benefits, hostage.
SANCHEZ: We’re held hostage over here.
SCHUMER: Hold it hostage. Hold it hostage.
JOHNSON: Extension of these taxes have been held hostage.
SPITZER: We are being held hostage. Every one of us, we are hostages — being held hostage — by 42 Republican Senators.
RUSH: The last there was Client No. 9, Eliot Spitzer.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Back to Obamaville being held hostage, day one, the poor Democrats, the poor Obama, the Republicans are holding the Senate hostage. This is over the extension of middle-class tax rates. Now, remember for the last seven years the Democrats have been telling us there weren’t any middle-class tax cuts, that the Bush tax cuts were for the millionaires and billionaires only, the rich only. Now all of a sudden they somehow found tax cuts they want to extend. At any rate, The Politico story: ‘Hopes for Cooperation Quickly Dashed,’ this is Carrie Budoff Brown writing. ‘A day that started off with the rare sight of top Obama officials sitting down with Democrats and Republicans in Congress to hash out a tax-cut deal deteriorated almost immediately Wednesday, as both parties reverted to partisan form. Senate Republicans threatened to grind the Senate to a halt. House Democrats announced plans to force a vote on middle-class only tax cuts — with Republicans crying foul. And the idea of a bipartisan tax-cut bargain that seemed possible at Tuesday’s White House meeting? It had practically evaporated before lunchtime.’
Oh-ho-ho-ho. So they’re totally distressed over there at The Politico. And all this is about is how dare the Republicans do this, don’t they realize this is all still about what the Democrats want to do and wanna get done? Now, this headline, ‘Hopes for Cooperation Quickly Dashed,’ that mighta made sense two years ago when it was Obama failing to do the cooperating. But as far as the State-Controlled Media is concerned, process and horse races, those are the things that give the media a sense of excitement, process stories, horse race stories. And those days are long gone. We are in a new era of life or death, recession or depression, and fiscally sound or bankrupt. The headline doesn’t surprise me. But I simply want the good folks at Politico to know that they look like a bunch of idiots stuck in the past when they run a headline like this. The Republicans won the election. No one with the tiniest bit of brains gives a damn whether or not the Democrats and Republicans held hands at some meeting. That’s not the focus of the American people on whether or not things are getting better. It’s not whether or not the Republicans and Democrats are holding hands. What we’re all doing is holding our noses at the stench from the dead businesses brutally mutilated by Democrats since taking over Congress.
You think we’re sitting here worried about whether the Republicans and Democrats are holding hands? The story is will Obama’s tax increases go into effect or will tax rates remain the same? No one knows what the hell’s going on with their taxes, the taxes paid by their employers, there’s uncertainty out there and we got a story about, damn, the Republicans and Democrats just can’t work together, refuse to work together, and we were hoping so much that we would have people that would get long with one another, but it just isn’t happening. And of course that’s not really what they want. They just want to write a story about how mean the Republicans are. When have the Democrats cooperated since January of 2007? Name one occasion, Miss Budoff Brown, where the Democrats compromised, just one. Democrats have had total control of Congress since January 2007. They’ve locked the Republicans out of every important decision for four years, and now the Republicans are holding the Democrats hostage?