RUSH: I almost couldn’t take it last night. I almost could not take it. I knew Bill Clinton was going to do what he always does, and that’s go out and lie through his teeth. But then Biden comes on, and some of the stuff that came out of Biden’s mouth, a noted plagiarizer, Clinton a noted perjurer, both these guys on full display, and the slobbering media swallowed it all. I had to hear these two speeches, and then I listened and I read analysts talking about how effective both speeches were, while those same analysts acknowledged the lies in the speeches. I sit there and I ask myself, how in a sane world can something that is a lie or a series of lies be effective? Look, I’m an adult and I understand all during the nineties the Drive-Bys marveled at how Clinton lied. But the combination of the words ‘effective’ and ‘lies’ sums up the Democrat Party. It sums up what we’re going to get tonight with Obama. Everybody’s talking about this speech tonight at Invesco Field at Mile High as being in front of a Greek set. More and more people now are starting to think that this is an attempt to sort of recreate the setting in front of the Lincoln Memorial when Martin Luther King gave his big speech 45 years ago.
Here’s Biden talking about how his dad kept telling him, ‘You get up, you get knocked down you keep getting up and you keep getting up and you keep getting up,’ and then his mom said, ‘You do more than get up.’ She said, ‘You get out there and you go bloody the nose of the bully.’ I’m thinking this is the guy that wanted to lose in Iraq. This is the guy that opposed the surge. This is the guy who doesn’t put into practice, in his life, in his politics what he lauded his parents for raising him with last night. Then I found this in the Democrat Party platform. This is actually in the platform. ‘For decades, Americans have been told to act for ourselves, by ourselves, on our own. Democrats reject this recipe for division and failure.’ Ah, platforms, they’re kindling for fireplaces after conventions are over. But the people that write them care deeply about all this. So basically the Democrat Party platform summed up here in two sentences is: Screw the America that we’ve always known. These people are getting away with trashing the country; they’re getting away with trashing the economy. They are not being held accountable for it. The economy, by the way, is stunning. The growth rate for the second quarter is out, 3.3%. I went back, Clinton last night lying about the economy during his presidency. I went back and looked. Do you know what the January ’01 — that would be the first quarter — GDP rate was? First quarter of ’01, when Bush took office, 0.49, minus 0.4.
Clinton handed off — and we all remember this except the Drive-Bys won’t remind anybody of it — Clinton handed off an economic growth rate of -0.49% to George W. Bush, and then here came 9/11 shortly thereafter because of inadequacies of Clinton’s foreign policy during his own eight years as president of the United States, and I have to listen to Biden reprise the 1992 BS that this is the worst economy he’s ever seen, portraying this country as a soup line country. So trash the country, trash the economy, and then put themselves up as the people to fix it. It’s wearing me out, folks. I can imagine if you’re watching this it’s wearing you out, too. It literally is wearing me out. I went to bed last night, and frustrated is not the word. Furious is the word for it. Even though I knew it was going to happen, and even though I knew the Drive-Bys were gonna call it magical and effective and so forth, and then I get up and I read where West Virginia Democrats are not buying into Obama’s act.
Now, Rasmussen says he sees the beginning of an Obama bounce. You would think so. Here’s another thing. I’m fed up with hearing about Obama. He shows up for five minutes last night — and he’s not even part of this, this has been the Clinton convention — he shows up for five minutes last night, and he’s already overexposed. By the way, as an added bonus on today’s program, my friends, I am going to give you the speech Bill Clinton really wanted to give last night.
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RUSH: Let’s start with Joe Biden. Listen to this story.
RUSH: Well, now, isn’t this amazing? This is from the guy who tried to author defeat in Iraq! This is the guy who opposed the Gulf War in 1991. This is the guy who voted for the war in Iraq, but he opposed the surge. So what have we learned here in this little bite? First off, sounds like little Joe’s house was pretty conservative. It sounds like his parents loved him, cared about his future. It sounds like he had a mom and dad that were there for him, and his mom has her own little message after dad says just get up: Go out there and bloody the bully’s nose. Now, from this story, ladies and gentlemen, we have to assume that simply breaking a nose would not be good enough for mom.
Nope. She insisted upon little Joey Biden drawing blood. You have to respect that. Joey’s mom wasn’t a micromanager. She kept it simple, trusted her son could work out the details. Just go out there and kick their butt, bloody their nose. So I think maybe ought to send Joe Biden around to various schools in the country and say, ‘The way we deal with bullies like Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden is to bloody their nose.’ Now, how did it happen, ladies and gentlemen? Joe Biden was taught all of these values. Do you realize that crowd last night applauded violence? Where was the conflict resolution, Joe?
Why didn’t your parents tell you to go out there like you are having kids be taught today? Why didn’t you go out there and try to negotiate with the bully and resolve the conflict? Oh, no! When it was you, Joe, your dad goes, ‘Bloody their nose.’ You didn’t even ask your allies to help, Joe! You didn’t care what your family’s reputation was, you didn’t care whether the neighborhood loved you or hated you and you didn’t care what the neighborhood would think of you after you went out and bloodied the guy’s nose. You just went out and did it! Now all of a sudden your country is not worth the house you grew up in. Your country is not worth the values you grew up with! (shouting) You phony baloney, plastic banana, good-time rock ‘n’ roller. I’m sorry, folks. I cannot handle these people anymore! (sigh) Here’s another sound bite.
BIDEN: For those of us who grew up in middle class neighborhoods like Scranton and Wilmington, that was the American dream. Ladies and gentlemen, but today — today — that American dream feels like it’s slowly slipping away. I don’t have to tell you that. You feel it every single day in your own lives. I’ve never seen time when Washington has watched so many people get knocked down without doing anything to help them get back up.
RUSH: What the hell? Joe, who helped you get back up? You just got through teaching a story of self-reliance, and you are instead spreading dependent helplessness to as many Americans as possible. You are not behaving and living the lessons you learned when you grew up. Besides, what you said is a lie! The economic circumstance of this country is nowhere near the way you described it. But hey, he hasn’t changed. In 1988 he talked about how nobody around the world respected us and how the economy was letting people down. (sigh) One more. That’s it, all I can handle.
BIDEN: Should mom move in with us now that — now that dad’s gone? Fifty, 60, $70 just to fill up the gas tank. How in God’s name with winter coming, how we gonna heat the home? Another year, no raise. Did you hear? Did you hear they may be cutting our health care at the company? Now we owe more money on our home than our home is worth. How in God’s name are we going to send the kids to college? How we gonna retire, Joe? You know, folks, that’s the America that George Bush has left us. And that’s the America we’ll continue to get if George — excuse me, if John McCain — is elected president of the United States in — Freudian slip. Freudian slip!
RUSH: He’s used that joke a bunch of times. It’s not a Freudian slip. This list of woes that the American people are experiencing, this is just a sad bunch of poor, poor wretches. Did his parents think this way? You think Biden’s parents did? You know, Biden’s dad was very wealthy. He lost it all and got some back before he died. No raise? Maybe cutting our health care at the company? By the way, if I hear one more damn Democrat tonight talking about the high tuition in college, I may explode, because who is running the colleges? Who is running the universities? A bunch of same-column leftists. Tuition is kept high on purpose! Student loans are up on purpose so that leftist colleges and administrators earn big money. They will never do anything to cut tuition! It’s all part of their indoctrination process.
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RUSH: This is Bob in Norwich, Connecticut. You’re next, sir, and welcome.
CALLER: Hey, Rush, how you doing, man?
RUSH: Fine, sir. Thank you.
CALLER: Hey, great. I got a softball question for you. Maybe it’s a hardball question. After Slick Willie gave his speech last night and really massaged the whole crowd and they all went crazy, do you think that Barack Obama can top that speech tonight?
RUSH: Well, here’s the thing about Clinton. Clinton has what I think in the Democrat Party is a unique ability to synthesize things down, to simplify them into two, three, four-word slogans that he repeats over and over again that are lies but that people rally around, they start repeating and so forth. Obama’s speeches, up ’til now, have been these soaring, verbose, rhetorical displays. Obama has not gotten specific, Obama says nothing. I think tonight is an effort to recapture the magic of the Obama soaring rhetoric from way back when, but they keep telling us that Obama is going to get specific and make the case for change here tonight. It will be a first for him, but, look, if they write it, he can do it. The bottom line is if they write it and put it on the prompter, he can do it.
CALLER: Wouldn’t it be easier if he just came out and said, ‘Dittos’? (laughing)
So they got in the limos, they went over to the convention hall, and they greeted the delegates the night before he was to do his big acceptance speech. It was way out of place, and it was not traditional, so it was strange. So Obama shows up last night, two reasons, folks, that Obama showed up, one, I kid you not on this, damage control, depending on what Bill Clinton might have done earlier in the convention. The second reason he showed up, I think, was to justify the setting for tonight’s speech. That’s basically what he did, explain to people why they chose Invesco Field at Mile High, ’cause he wants as many people as possible to be part of the party and to be part of this change and be part of what they’re doing, because there’s been some criticism about this, and I think he felt the need to respond to it a bit.
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RUSH: John in Tallahassee, Florida. John, welcome to the EIB Network. Hi.
CALLER: Hey, welcome. Thank you. I’m watching America’s favorite sociopath last night, our former president.
RUSH: Yes.
CALLER: And he’s going on and on trying to perpetuate the myth of the Clinton legend, and I hear him talk about how people said that he was too young and unqualified to become president.
RUSH: He was.
CALLER: Of course he was.
RUSH: He proved it.
CALLER: Exactly, but according to what he said, the implication was that that was wrong. The fact is the son of a gun was elected twice and never got a majority. In fact, on his first election he only got 42%. So most people did agree that he was unqualified by virtue of the fact that he got 42% of the vote.
RUSH: I appreciate that, but he also demonstrated he’s unqualified.
CALLER: Oh, no question about it.
RUSH: Look at the foreign policy disasters that occurred during those eight years of Bill Clinton, setting up 9/11.
CALLER: But don’t just give him credit for the economic policy though, because that wasn’t any of his doing either. The economic boom didn’t kick in until his second term, and that was after he was dragged kicking and screaming to the table to levy tax cuts.
RUSH: By a Republican Congress.
CALLER: Absolutely.
RUSH: Welfare reform. Well, Clinton’s whole legacy, his whole presidency is a myth. That’s why today he’s still in search of a legacy.
CALLER: He sure is, and he was trying to seal it even further last night, and, Rush, I share your angst, though, with watching and hearing what we’ve been watching and hearing and haven’t slept too well the last couple of nights, either, so I’m looking forward to next week when we actually get to watch and listen to some quality folks that hopefully will take part in that convention.
RUSH: If they televise it. They may all be in New Orleans hoping for destruction.
CALLER: There you go. Blowing up the levies, probably.
RUSH: (laughing) Drive-Bys might even try to — nope, nope, nope. We’ll be back, John. Thanks very much.
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RUSH: Let’s rev it back up. Last night in Denver at the Democrat National Convention Joe Biden.
BIDEN: Now, let me ask you this. Whose judgment do you trust? Should you trust the judgment of John McCain when he said only three years ago, ‘Afghanistan, we don’t read about it anymore in the papers because it’s succeeded.’ Or should you believe Barack Obama when said a year ago, ‘We need to send two more combat battalions to Afghanistan?’
RUSH: When I heard this — and, by the way, that got no applause because these delegates don’t want a war anywhere. They do not want troops being sent anywhere! So here is Biden. I don’t even need to comment on this. But here’s Biden, the vice presidential nominee of a pacifist party, advocating an expansion of troops, he doesn’t even know the difference between a brigade and a battalion and neither does anybody else in the Obama campaign who wrote his speech and checked the speech. But we’re supposed to trust Obama’s judgment on this and not trust McCain’s? Here’s more.
BIDEN: Should we trust John McCain’s judgment when he says — when he says we can’t have no timelines to draw down our troops from Iraq, that we must stay indefinitely, or should we listen to Barack Obama who says shift the responsibility to the Iraqis and set a time to bring our combat troops home? Now, after six long years, the administration and the Iraqi government are on the verge of setting a date to bring our troops home. John McCain was wrong, and Barack Obama was right — again, again, and again. On the most important national security issues of our time, John McCain was wrong, and Barack Obama has been proven right.
RUSH: This is such a stretch as to be unbelievable, and this is one of the many times that I just sat there and was in stunned disbelief at what I was hearing. He doesn’t talk about the role of the surge in helping to create the timelines. By the way, we learned today that Mookie’s boys are officially disbanding! Should we trust Biden’s judgment? Biden was against the surge. Biden voted for the war but he voted for not funding troops a couple of times. McCain never, ever said, ‘Stay there indefinitely.’ What McCain was talking about was, ‘You set a timeline for getting out of there before we win this thing, and it’s going to be a bloodbath after we leave,’ and he was exactly right. Obama has no judgment on this! Obama has no involvement in this.
Obama hasn’t chaired one committee hearing on this. This was a 100%, manufactured lie and story — and he blew it at his own convention by suggesting, ladies and gentlemen, that we need to send two more combat battalions, whatever he said, to Afghanistan. The purpose for this, by the way, is to cement in the eyes of as many people as possible that Bush screwed up, that Afghanistan’s always been the focus and going into Iraq was a waste of time. Let’s not forget what old Joe’s proposal here was for Iraq. He wanted to partition it! He wanted to split Iraq into three different countries, by ethnic lines. That would have created a civil war! He did not want to win. Obama did not want to win. They were both invested in defeat.
That’s what they wanted. So did Nancy Pelosi and so did Harry Reid. They wanted the defeat of their own country, they wanted the defeat of the United States of America, and how about these insults of his good friend McCain? It’s one thing to be critical of McCain, but these are personal attacks on McCain’s judgment that the American people do not share. Those that follow all these things know Biden really doesn’t mean it because Biden has done nothing but laud McCain up until the time he’s been nominated. He would… (interruption) No, I did not hear any Kerry. I just read about some of Kerry. I didn’t want to hear it. I told Cookie, ‘I don’t want any sound bites from John Kerry. I’ve been there, done that.’ This was enough. This and Clinton was more than I could handle. Here’s one more Biden.
BIDEN: Choice in this election is clear. These times require more than a good soldier. They require a wise leader. A leader who can change, change — the change that everybody knows we need.
RUSH: (sigh) It’s just takes your breath away. It just takes your breath away. ‘We need more than a good soldier. We require a wise leader.’ This is a guy who Biden has accepted the leadership role of McCain in the Senate for how many years? I’m telling you, they can’t talk about Obama’s leadership; there hasn’t been any, that they want to advertise, which is their big problem. Jeffrey Toobin. There was one Drive-By person who thought that it was not good.
TOOBIN: I thought it was by far the weakest speech of the, uh, major speeches we’ve heard. I thought he stumbled a lot in delivering what he thought were his best lines. I thought it was not thematically together the way Bill Clinton’s speech was. I thought there was not a single memorable theme. Yes, he kept saying, ‘That’s not change, we could…’ That’s — What was he say? He said, ‘That’s not change. That’s more of the same.’ But, boy, I did not think it was a very effective speech.
RUSH: Good! I don’t know how he came to that conclusion ’cause it’s the first time he’s been right all week. But at least he got it right. I guess anybody after three days might be right once in the Drive-Bys. It wasn’t thematic, but that’s not what it was supposed to be. He did stumble. That’s why I thought the reviews of this speech were just way over the top. Some of the attempted comedy lines fell flat, embarrassingly so. Now, The Forehead, Paul Begala. I guess you could say this is a backhand compliment.
BEGALA: The guys running this campaign for Barack are thrilled with Joe’s speech, and here’s why. When you’re running a campaign, you want to grow and grow and grow. Barack’s base is terrific. It was enough to get him here and to make history. It is not enough to win the White House. He’s got the arugula vote; he needs the ham and cheese sandwich vote. Joe Biden’s sandwich was ham and cheese, man. I can take that speech and send it to every county commissioner in America, and he or she can get up and repeat that at the Rotary Club. They can’t repeat Bill Clinton. They can’t repeat Barack Obama.
RUSH: But they can repeat Joe Biden! If Biden took this speech to the average Rotary Club in America, he’d be booed out of the hall.
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RUSH: Okay, Bill Clinton. Let me just set up these Bill Clinton sound bites briefly, ladies and gentlemen. Bill Clinton did not mean one thing he said about Barack Obama last night. He did not believe one thing. He just said, (doing Clinton impression) ‘Ah, screw this, hell, if they give me $12 million to do this, $6 million, if the price is right, I’ll go out there and do whatever the first half. Second half I’ll let ‘er rip, but the first half I’ll go out there and just be perfunctory about this. I’m just going to say what people want to hear and then get outta town as fast as I can.’ He apparently forgot about Bosnia, cowboy unilateral attacks, he forgot that he ignored terrorism. You know, anybody could go out and give a great speech if you don’t have to tell the truth. Anybody can go out and give a great speech if you avoid the facts. Clinton may have been setting the bar so that Obama will either be a failure as a president or a failure as a candidate. Bill can say, ‘Hey, I gave it my best shot, me and Hillary went out there, we did everything we could for this guy, and look, he couldn’t carry the ball. We gave it to him on the ten yard line.’ Bill Clinton’s made over $50 million dollars making speeches. He’s a professional speechmaker, did a fine job, always does. Bill Clinton said Obama was everything and a bag of chips. Big deal. Bill is a convicted liar. Bill is a serial cheater. He’s talking family values. Can you imagine John Edwards watching this thing last night? Bill has no family values! He values nothing more than being the center of attention, making money in ways that we’ll never know. He tried to gut the military, rode the wave of the Reagan economy and tax cuts, lucky enough investors had money to plow into the emerging technology sector. Well, let’s listen. Here’s a portion of Bill Clinton last night.
RUSH: That’s total BS.
CLINTON: With Joe Biden’s experience and wisdom, supporting Barack Obama’s proven understanding, instincts, and insight —
RUSH: A crock!
CLINTON: — America will have the national security leadership we need.
RUSH: No!
CLINTON: And so, my fellow Democrats, I say to you, Barack Obama is ready to lead America and to restore American leadership in the world.
RUSH: He didn’t mean a word of it! He’s just a whore, for whatever the price he will say whatever he’s supposed to say or for his legacy or whatever. He doesn’t believe it, he can’t possibly. He’s not stupid. He may be pathological, but he’s not stupid. He doesn’t believe a dime of this. I will guarantee you, in ways we will never see the fingerprints, both he and Hillary are going to be doing everything they can to make sure this guy does not win this election. It’s the only thing that makes sense. Here, let’s keep hitting the button here.
CLINTON: Sixteen years ago, you gave me the profound honor to lead our party to victory and to lead our nation to a new era of peace and broadly shared prosperity.
RUSH: That’s a crock!
CLINTON: Together we prevailed in a hard campaign in which the Republicans said I was too young and too inexperienced to be commander-in-chief.
RUSH: You were! You proved it!
CLINTON: Sound familiar? It didn’t work in 1992, because we were on the right side of history. And it will not work in 2008 because Barack Obama is on the right side of history.
RUSH: He was too young and experienced. In fact, he had more to recommend himself as commander-in-chief than Obama does. Remember, Clinton — and he even told us this — he had deployed the Arkansas National Guard a couple times. That’s what he said, he had military experience. Obama? You know Clinton doesn’t believe a word of this. He doesn’t believe a word of this.