RUSH: I want you to hear a piece of audio, because, folks, after yesterday’s program, especially the first hour-and-a-half of yesterday’s program, you surely remember that I was just confounded here. I was on the verge of being incoherent having to discuss the silly proposition that tire gauges and inflating tires was a salient, relevant, important part of our energy policy, which is to produce more energy.
I went home last night, thinking about all this, even though yesterday’s program was tons of fun, I will admit, I said, ‘Is this the best we’ve got?’ The presidential campaign is about inflating tires. I’ll touch on this in a little bit more detail as the program unfolds today, but it’s a little bit distressing. I mean, here we face major problems. We have great challenges in this country. And this campaign, I don’t care which side of it you look at, has been reduced to ridiculousness, it’s been reduced to absurdity. We now get stories, there’s a story from the AP today about pop culture, about the remote control viewing habits in the McCain household and the Obama household. It’s a little disconcerting. I want to add to it this next sound bite. I don’t know that you have heard this yet, ladies and gentlemen. This happened yesterday in Elkhart, Indiana. It was at a campaign event. A little seven-year-old girl stood up to ask a question of Barack Obama. Her name is Natalia. Her question of Barack Obama, ‘Why did you start running for president?’
RUSH: All right, now, here he’s brought it home. He had trashed his country in Germany, he has seen the result of that in his plummeting poll numbers, and now he does it again yesterday in Elkhart, Indiana, a seven-year-old little girl. You’re running for president, Senator Obama. A little girl asks you a question, ‘Why did you start running for president?’ It’s a seven-year-old, Senator. You tell her because you love the country. You tell her because this is the greatest place on earth, that we’ve got challenges, but you want to help the country through it. You don’t tell a seven-year-old that her country isn’t what it once was. You do not lie to seven-year-olds and tell them that your country sucks. You just don’t do it, Senator. America is no longer what it could be, what it once was? How the hell would you know, sir? Your experience has only been in one part of America, elite, leftist academia. Oh, and with Jeremiah Wright. You’ve hung around with a bunch of people who do hate this country, there’s no question about that. But for crying out loud, to a seven-year-old? America is, uh, no longer, uh, what it, uh, could be, what it, uh, once was, and I say to myself I don’t want that future for my children. You wouldn’t want your life and your wife’s life for your kids?
Before you decided to run for president, Senator Obama, your wife was pulling down 300 grand working in PR at a hospital. You had written two books that got you out of debt. What is wrong with your life? What is wrong with the opportunities in this country that had been made available to you, that you wouldn’t want for that seven-year-old girl that asked you the question? What’s so bad about your life that you wouldn’t want your kids living it? You’re running for president of the United States, and you’ve run down the country to a seven-year-old. We’ve got to have better than this out there. This just continues this absurdity about the tire pressure being a serious energy plan. And, by the way, we go to the New York Times today, ladies and gentlemen: ‘The great tire-gauge debate appears to be winding down. After telling a caller to a teleconference Tuesday night that, yes, keeping tires well inflated is a good thing, Senator John McCain tonight seemed to signal that the matter was being put to rest.’
The story goes on to say that Obama was the winner. The Drive-Bys, the New York Times here has declared Obama the winner in the tire gauge back-and-forth. This is an insult to everybody’s intelligence, because there’s no winner in the tire gauge business other than all of us who are laughing at the silliness of this. McCain lost the whole point of this anyway. The original statement Obama made was we wouldn’t have to drill at all for oil because if people would just inflate their tires, we would save as much gasoline, oil, as we would get from drilling. That’s the stupidest thing anybody’s ever said running for president, including Dukakis and John Kerry. The Drive-Bys circle the wagons around this, McCain engages in, ‘Oh, I agree with you, AAA says we should do that.’ Obama wins this? What are these people looking at? Obama wins the tire gauge debate? We got a tire gauge debate going on in our presidential campaign, and Obama rips his own country to a seven-year-old girl in Elkhart, Indiana. Let’s go back to February 18th of this year. This is in Madison, Wisconsin, and this is Michelle (My Belle) Obama.
MRS. OBAMA: Let me tell you something. For the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really proud of my country, and not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change —
RUSH: I don’t care to analyze this. People say, ‘Well, look where she came from. She grew up poor, she’s black, and she’s at Princeton, all these student loans.’ The way I look at it, she’s in the top 1% of earners in this country at 300 grand, before they pull her off that job to be part of the presidential campaign. She did get into Princeton and she wrote a lousy thesis and still graduated. What is there to complain about? These people cannot let go of something that never happened to them. They cannot let go of something that did not happen to them. They hang around all these people that have the same viewpoint of America, and the Democrat Party has nominated this guy. Remember when Michelle (My Belle) was in Zanesville, Ohio, back in late February, remember what she said to a group of women there? Quote, ‘Don’t go into corporate America, you know, become teachers, work to the community, be social workers, be a nurse. Those are the careers that we need, and we’re encouraging our young people to do that. But if you make that choice, as we did, to move out of the money-making industry to the helping industry, then your salaries respond.’
What do you mean, as you did? When did you move out of the money-making industry? You mean by Barack running for president, and that’s when you first became proud of your country at however old you are, Michelle (My Belle)? So go tell people, ‘Don’t invest in your dreams; don’t follow your passions; don’t follow your desires. Go out there and be what we think you should be. Nobodies, invisible nobodies working in low-paying jobs because that’s all this country is worth anyway.’ Now, Michelle (My Belle) was taken offstage, there was some kind of a makeover on her out there, and she’s surfaced now. We have a couple sound bites. She was on Good Morning America today. Robin Roberts says to Michelle (My Belle), ‘The Paris Hilton, Britney Spears ad, what was your reaction when you saw it?’
RUSH: Ha-ha-ha! That’s a new one. He has walked away from lucrative careers to work in the community? Have you heard that before? That’s a new one on me. Anyway, Michelle (My Belle), elitism doesn’t even begin to describe your husband. Egoist, egotist, messianic complex. Besides, none of that has anything to do with money. Why is it all these Democrats are constantly focused on money? If it’s not the Clintons telling everybody how rich they are, and they don’t need tax cuts, it’s Michelle and Barack Obama talking about how little they had when they were in the top 1% as a family, and it’s all about money with these people. So elitism is an attitude, Michelle. Elitism is a nose in-the-air attitude that says I’m better than everybody else, I’m smarter than everybody else, and that’s your husband to a T. Robin Roberts then said, ‘But the controversial New Yorker cover, where you’re portrayed as being militant, Barack being defined as a Muslim with the turban, what did you think when you picked that up and looked at it?’
MRS. OBAMA: Well, this is tacky, but then, you know, you move on. Then I pick up this great article about me in Ebony. You know, so there’s up and down, good and bad. You know, I just don’t emotionally go to those high highs or those low lows.
RUSH: Yeah, yeah, that’s the makeover change. That’s what they’ve been doing. They’ve been stripping her emotions out of her, she is a flatliner; she’s a straight liner. I don’t know if it’s Prozac or whatever, Zoloft or whatever, but she’s not mad anymore. She’s not going to get mad at anything anymore because that’s not working. The thought in her head, as she’s answering these questions, these puffball softballs from Good Morning America,
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Everybody’s bobbing their heads to this on the other side of the glass.
Ladies and gentlemen, just to be clear, I am not accusing Michelle Obama of being on drugs. I simply used that as an illustration to suggest that they have really toned down her emotional reaction to things. I mean, she was out there fired up and mad. She was angry like Jeremiah Wright. That’s one of the reasons they did a makeover. So she came out on this appearance on Good Morning America, and she just flatlined, just a straight line. There’s no emotion whatsoever. It’s like they stripped it out, and I said ‘like if you’re on Prozac or something,’ but I’m not making the allegation because I frankly don’t even know what those drugs do, other than I’ve known someone taking the stuff and that’s why I made the comment, because he’s like a zombie. (laughing) Did I step in it further there, H.R.? Good. Okay. Because I didn’t identify the guy, and I’m not trying to impugn the drugs.
I don’t — I just — 800-282-2882 is the number if you want to be on the program.
RUSH: I have to go back and play this again, a little seven-year-old girl asks Obama yesterday, ‘Why do you want to be president?’
OBAMA: America, uh, is — is no longer, uh, what it — it could be, what it once was. And I say to myself, ‘I don’t want that future for my children.’
RUSH: All right. Let me take a different tack with this, because during the commercial break, Mr. Snerdley said to me over the IFB, ‘I don’t believe you don’t get this,’ and the staff never says that to me, ladies and gentlemen. I’m usually the one saying that to them. ‘What don’t I get?’ He said, ‘He wasn’t lying to the little girl. That’s exactly what he thinks! That’s how he was raised, and that’s what he’s been taught throughout his life, that America is imperfect. It ain’t any good. It once was great (we don’t know when) but it’s not as great as it once was,’ and so what we really got there, essentially, ladies and gentlemen — and the children will always manage to pull this off — is we got 100%, unfiltered honesty. He didn’t even have to stop and think about that.
That answer was instinctive, and so we have the Democrat Party presidential nominee (presumptive nominee) actually saying to an audience in Elkhart, Indiana, with a seven-year-old little girl, what he thinks of his country, and it’s not good. Now, don’t misunderstand this. I am not some idealist here who thinks that there’s nothing wrong with this country and that you cannot criticize the country. Not by a long shot. There’s plenty wrong with this country, led by people like Obama and liberals. There’s plenty wrong with the country. But fundamentally, institutionally, this is the greatest place on earth, the greatest place that’s ever been; and it’s those fundamentals and those institutions that the left predominantly… When I say that, I’m talking about our founding, the founding of this country: the principles, the concepts, the fundamentals, the traditions, and the institutions of our founding is what is under assault. When Obama and liberals look at America and don’t like it, that’s what they see.
They see the principles of the founding, and they don’t like it. They don’t like the Second Amendment, for example. They put things in the Constitution that aren’t there. We’ve been through all this over the course of 20 years. So I’m not a blind, rose-colored-classes kind of person. But somebody running for the presidency of the United States, it seems to me, would… In fact, you know, Obama thinks he’s JFK, right? He’s out there, thinks he’s JFK. He’s trying to adopt some of the physical mannerisms of JFK, and they’re talking about Camelot 2 and so forth. During this campaign in 1960, the presidential campaign 1960, I was nine years old. It was the first time I paid any attention to a presidential campaign in a serious way. I had my dad helping me. We were coming off of a pretty good boom — World War II, the fifties, things were booming — and JFK acknowledged it, and he said (paraphrased), ‘But, you know what? We can do even better.’ Pass the torch to a new generation, all of that. ‘We can do even better,’ but he did not criticize the country. He said, we can do even period of time. So Obama has a lot to learn. But they don’t want to do better in the sense that you and I think the country can improve. They want to totally change it.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: By the way, I’d like to ask a question of The Messiah and his disciples. If the country’s no good right now, if it’s not what it once was, when was the country better? We need to ask him this. Somebody needs to ask, when was the country better, Obama? Was it better before civil rights legislation 1964? Was it better before the Great Society? Was it better before the war on poverty? Was it better before affirmative action, Senator? Was it better before Roe v. Wade? When was the country better, Senator? The Messiah needs to stick to the prompter, and fast.
RUSH: As further evidence, ladies and gentlemen, that Barack Obama was telling the truth to the seven-year-old in Elkhart, Indiana, November 23rd, 2004, during a book signing for his book, Dreams from My Father.
OBAMA: The basic outlines of the government that we possess and our civic religion as a people is such that, potentially, at least, we could create a society that is the model for the world. It isn’t right now.
RUSH: Barack Obama, in 2004, telling the truth: He thinks this country is defective, there’s major problems with it, it’s not a model for the world. He said that four years ago, and said the same thing to a seven-year-old girl yesterday in Elkhart, Indiana.