RUSH: Here’s Lynn in Lima, Ohio. You’re next on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Yeah. Hello, Rush?
RUSH: I’m fine. How are you?
CALLER: Fine.
RUSH: Good.
CALLER: I’m just wondering, like, what planet you live on because I’m living down here on planet earth, and just present Republican president’s been in office, I’ve watched this country unravel, like I’ve never seen.
RUSH: It’s done just the opposite, Lynn.
CALLER: No it hasn’t.
RUSH: I hate to break it to you, but it’s done just the opposite. Economic growth, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, productivity, wages, have all skyrocketed since the Bush tax cuts.
CALLER: No.
RUSH: When it was really bad was when Jimmy Carter was president —
CALLER: No.
RUSH: Yes, Lynn.
CALLER: Sorry.
RUSH: No, no. I’m sorry.
CALLER: We keep losing jobs.
RUSH: No!
CALLER: Factories are closing.
RUSH: No, no, no, no. Well, recently, since the Democrats took over Congress, the stock market has plummeted —
CALLER: No.
RUSH: — and we have started losing jobs.
CALLER: No. No, we’ve been… Uh, as soon as he came in office, it started going downhill like a train —
RUSH: No it didn’t.
CALLER: — getting ready to derail. That’s why I said. I’m living here. I don’t know where you’re living.
RUSH: Lynn, I know this is going to be pointless.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: But I love… Stick with me, folks, on this, because I love trying these things. Remember, there’s a whole lot of Lynns out there listening.
CALLER: Sure.
RUSH: I might not get to her, but I might get through to some of the others. Lynn, listen to me on this. Look at me, okay? Are you interested in truth, or do you want me to confirm your feelings?
CALLER: No.
RUSH: Because, you know, I could do a Bill Clinton, like, (doing Clinton impression), Lynn, you know, I feel —
CALLER: Times were good when Clinton was in office!
RUSH: I know, they were, Lynn.
CALLER: The stock market was —
RUSH: And George Bush has come in here and he killed 4,000 Americans in a pointless and unjust war, and he’s just destroyed all the working jobs, and the so forth.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: I feel for you.
CALLER: Yeah, it’s pretty bad.
RUSH: I feel for you.
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: I really wish there were something I could do, but I’m not in power.
CALLER: Yeah. It’s bad.
RUSH: You gotta vote for Hillary. (end Clinton impression) Now, I could do that —
CALLER: The only thing you can do is get him out. (bitter laugh)
RUSH: Now, wait a minute. See how much better you feel if I do that? But that’s not the truth. Do you want the truth?
CALLER: (pause) Sure. Sure I want the truth.
RUSH: Well, sometimes the truth, some people don’t like the truth, or are afraid of it because it shocks their worldview.
CALLER: No.
RUSH: The country has not gone downhill since 2001 when Bush was inaugurated. He inherited a mild recession from the Clinton administration.
CALLER: No.
RUSH: Yeah. See? There was already a mild recession when Bush took office, and then 9/11 hit.
CALLER: No.
RUSH: That had further economic distress.
CALLER: Yeah, he handled that all wrong.
RUSH: The recovery… Now, Lynn —
CALLER: Well, he did. If a Democrat was in office, the country wouldn’t have ended up like this. That I know as sure as I’m sitting here.
RUSH: ‘If.’ Lynn, ‘if’ is for children. We can’t go back and rewrite history —
CALLER: (crosstalk) that I know.
RUSH: — and we can’t say, ‘Gee, if Algore had won we wouldn’t be in this situation.’
CALLER: Uh-huh.
RUSH: I could play that game, too. If a Democrat had been in the White House we’d have had two or three more terrorist attacks in this country.
CALLER: I don’t believe that.
RUSH: Well —
CALLER: That’s an ‘if’, too.
RUSH: I’m just doing what you’re doing. You’re telling me ‘if’ a Democrat had won, we wouldn’t have this. We don’t have an economic problem. We have not had the country fall apart since 2001.
CALLER: Oh, it is.
RUSH: (sigh)
CALLER: I can’t believe I can’t say that. I mean, people have lost their jobs. They’re losing their houses. Factories are closing down.
RUSH: You know something, Lynn? Up until —
CALLER: That’s a truth.
RUSH: Up until last month, employment in this country was bigger and more people had productive jobs than ever before in the history of this country. Up until last month.
CALLER: (grumble)
RUSH: Ninety-six percent of the American people are paying their mortgages. The people who are being foreclosed on are people who should never have been lent money in the first place, because they were not qualified. But Democrats, not wanting to deny them the American dream, required the lending industry to give them ‘predatory’ — or give them what are called predatory — loans. Can you tell me what a predatory loan is, by the way? Do you know what it is?
CALLER: Well, no, but I’m not going to argue with that. That may be…
RUSH: Why not?
CALLER: No. I’m just not going to argue with that, but I’m just telling you I know what’s going on. I know that the — the — the factories are closing, and people have lost their jobs. That’s why they’re losing their houses.
RUSH: Since —
CALLER: They don’t have a job.
RUSH: Now, you’re partially right. Since the Democrats have assumed control of the Congress, we have lost some manufacturing jobs.
CALLER: But you can’t, uh, blame the Democrats. (laughs) It’s Republicans.
RUSH: I most certainly can.
CALLER: Well…
RUSH: They’re blocking free trade legislation. They are doing everything they can to dispirit the attitude of the American people. The reason you think what you think is not just because of your life experiences. It’s because the party you vote for is telling you this country is in bad shape, and you want it to be in bad shape.
CALLER: No, I’m listening to the news.
RUSH: Well, okay. The Democrats run the news, and the liberal media.
CALLER: No.
RUSH: You listen to the news, and you are being… Would you do me a favor?
CALLER: Yeah. Sure.
RUSH: Make me a promise. Just try it. Try turning off the news just for a week. Seriously, Lynn. I want you to do this and see if your mood improves. Don’t watch all this negative hype and propaganda that isn’t true. People are not losing their jobs left and right. We do have economic problems. The gas price is high; food prices are high. I’m not denying that there are economic challenges. We’re the United States of America. We come out of these things each and every time they happen. But we can only come out of them if the American people, people like you, understand that it’s people like you who make the country work. It’s not me. It’s not your local politician. It’s not your state politician. It’s not the federal government. You, your friends: You make the country work. Getting up every day, going to work, trying to improve your economic circumstance, engaging in commerce; you make the country work — and if your party or the news come along and dispirit you, depress you, and make you think there’s no point in working hard because the country is going to hell in a handbasket because George Bush is an idiot, then you are going to be letting the country down by not doing your part.
CALLER: Mmm-hmm.
RUSH: The country needs people like you to get active and busy and react, ‘Okay, the economy is having a little blip here. Fine. What can we do about it?’ Go out and engage in it. Be more productive, work harder, instead of sitting around and whining and moaning about George Bush or any other politician and wishing that another Democrat were in office because you can’t do anything about that until November.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: If people like you who make the country work, would simply turn off the news — don’t let your mood be affected by what you think is happening to other people, because you’re being lied to about that — we wouldn’t be in the economic circumstances that we’re in. You have more power to alter your life and the lives of your family than you know. But if people come around and tell you it will be pointless because George Bush is an idiot, or because we’re losing jobs, manufacturing jobs, all this sort of stuff, you’re going to say, ‘Okay, what’s the point?’ and you’re going to sit around and wait for a new president to fix this?
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: Well, you shouldn’t, because the president doesn’t fix anything. People do.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: The president doesn’t make the country work, the American people do. What presidents can do is make it harder or easier for people to make the country work.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: The president can’t do it. The president can raise your taxes; make it harder for you to succeed. He can cut your taxes and get rid of regulation; make it easier for you to succeed.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: But he can’t rejuvenate and revive an economy. If he could, there would never be any recessions. FDR would have gotten us out of a recession with a snap of his fingers. It took 12 years. No president has that kind of power. No political party does, either. The American people make the country work. Join us, Lynn.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: That last caller, Lynn from Ohio, bless her heart, is exactly what happens to people with years and years of exposure to liberalism. She’s depressed; she believes government holds all of her answers. Most importantly, she’s lost her free will as a person. She doesn’t think she has any control over her life, her economic circumstances. She has bought fully into the notion that what government does determines her happiness, or her misery. She’s bought the notion that when Republicans run the government, she’s miserable. When Democrats run the country, she’s probably just as miserable but doesn’t think so because Democrats are in office. It really is tragic what liberalism does to people. It destroys their free will, destroys their concept of self, destroys the concept of their own ability to be better than they think they are, makes them sit around and wait. This is one of the most infuriating things about liberalism to me, and I swear, folks, there’s nothing about that that I want to compromise with. It’s just hideous, what liberalism does to its own supporters, to its own advocates. It’s just a plain old American tragedy.
Let me give you another example. This is an op-ed from yesterday in the Washington Post, and it’s by Andrew Coulson, who is the director of the Cato Institute Center for Educational Freedom. The Cato Institute’s a liberal think tank. Listen to this. ‘We’re often told that public schools are underfunded. In the District, the spending figure cited most commonly is $8,322 per child, but total spending is close to $25,000 per child — on par with tuition at Sidwell Friends, the private school Chelsea Clinton attended in the 1990s. What accounts for the nearly threefold difference in these numbers? The commonly cited figure counts only part of the local operating budget. To calculate total spending, we have to add up all sources of funding for education from kindergarten through 12th grade, excluding spending on charter schools and higher education. For the current school year, the local operating budget is $831 million, including relevant expenses such as the teacher retirement fund. The capital budget is $218 million. The District receives about $85.5 million in federal funding. And the DC Council contributes an extra $81 million. Divide all that by the 49,422 students enrolled (for the 2007-08 year) and you end up with about $24,600 per child. For comparison, total per pupil spending at DC area private schools — among the most upscale in the nation — averages about $10,000 less. For most private schools, the difference is even greater.’
Then Mr. Coulson goes on with further detail. Twenty-five thousand dollars per year to publicly educate children in the district, and they aren’t being educated. That’s a Libertarian think tank. But this is not surprising to any of us. The figure in New Jersey is close to this. The figure in New York is close to this. And we just heard from Colin Powell’s group about all the dropouts that are taking place. This is pure liberalism, folks, one hundred percent pure liberalism destroying these institutions, then all the while clamoring for more money, saying we’re not spending enough on education. Private schools costing much less per person do a far better job of education. Why do you think so many parents want their kids to go into private schools? The DC school district is exactly the kind of school district that Colin Powell was talking about, inner city school district, all of these dropout problems, all these problems of people not learning anything, he called it a catastrophe. It’s not a catastrophe. It is an abject, utter, total failure and it’s recognized as such by a whole lot of people who just don’t have the guts to point the finger at the right place when finding the source of the problem. It’s not a blame game here. There’s no blame. There is actual fact to demonstrate that liberals and unions running the public schools have not as their objective educating kids, but rather protecting union jobs and other jobs in administration and so forth, and some people even think that there might be an advantage to under-educating kids, destroys their will early in life, gets ’em voting Democrat, and makes ’em unable to understand logical arguments that might change their mind someday.