RUSH: Here is Obama yesterday in Reno, Nevada, on the campaign trail.
OBAMA: Now is the moment for us to come together and put the fire out. I mean, think about it! Think about it. I-i-if your neighbor’s house is burning, you’re not going to spend a whole lot of time saying, ‘Well, that guy was always irresponsible. He always left the stove on. He always was smokin’ in bed.’ All those things may be true, but his house could end up affecting your house — and that’s the situation we’re in right now. We’ve got to make sure that we put the fire out, and then we’ll start making sure that these folks stop leaving the stove on.
RUSH: So here’s Obama basically saying he sees a fire (laughing). He sees a fire and he says, ‘Somebody put that out, somebody put that fire out.’ He’s not the guy to run get the bucket of water. He sits there and wants to focus on the guy whose house started on fire, maybe why, but we don’t have time to blame the guy yet. We’ll blame the guy later, but in the meantime somebody put that fire out. He keeps saying, ‘Let’s put the fire out,’ but he does nothing. Listen to this. Same rally yesterday, Reno, Nevada.
OBAMA: Uh, I will be calling members and, uh, getting their ideas. The — the main thing is to just move away from this hyperpolitical, uh, eh, environment and recognize the house is on fire, let’s put the — let’s put the fire out first and then we can figure out, uh, what caused it.
RUSH: We know what caused it. Folks, this is so infuriating. It’s maddening. We know what caused it. We know people like Obama and ACORN — and, by the way, in that preamble here to the Senate bill, ‘preserve housing’? What does it say? It says ‘preserve home ownership.’ If that isn’t a toss to ACORN, I don’t know what it is. This obviously meant Project Hope. This is obviously aimed at preserving minority home ownership. It’s code language for this. It’s preserving home ownership for people who can’t pay for it, pure and simple. The Senate bill has that in there. And Obama sits there and says we gotta figure out what caused it? We know what caused it, and in order to prevent it happening again, the same people that caused it cannot be involved in the fix, and yet they are.
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RUSH: Now, Obama, back to him for one more sound bite. This is in Reno yesterday, and reporter John Berman of ABC News interviewed him. He said, ‘You’re a very persuasive man. You have a certain amount of influence in your own party. Could you have done more — should you have done more — before the House vote yesterday to lobby for votes?’ Now listen to this answer.
OBAMA: Oh, absolutely not. Uh, because if you think about it, there was a deal struck between, uhh, Nancy Pelosi and, uh, the Republican leader, Boehner. Uh, the… Uh, the Democrats were supposed to get 120 votes. They got 140. So there was no sense on the Democratic side that we weren’t following through on our commitments. Uh, and apparently there were some problems on that side. I don’t think me calling House Republican members would have been that helpful. I tend not to be that persuasive — heh — on that side of the aisle.
RUSH: Wait a minute, Barry! You’re the great unifier! You’re the guy who can bring everybody together. You didn’t want to call the Republicans? You didn’t want to call the Republicans ’cause you tend not to be that persuasive on that side of the aisle? By the way, his description of the setup on this is entirely wrong. It’s so wrong, and he’s got to know how wrong it is, that this has to be a lie. Democrats were supposed to get 120 votes, they got 140? ‘No sense on the Democrat side that we weren’t following through on our commitments’? This bill in the House was set up by Pelosi to fail! She wanted it to fail. She wanted to create an election-year issue, trumping the Republicans. She’s getting creamed, by the way, in a lot of Drive-By Media outlets for her lack of sense, lack of leadership, lack of ability, lack of competence. Not a whole lot. You know, just a few indiscriminate newspapers here and there.
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RUSH: We’ll start in Berlin, Vermont. This is Chris. Nice to have you on the program, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. What an absolute honor. Mega firefighting, golf playing dittos from Vermont.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: Sir, I was listening to your cut of Mr. Firefighter Obama, and I thought it odd or telling about the Democrats that when they go to put out a fire, it’s because it might impact their house, not because it might save somebody’s life or it’s the right thing to do.
RUSH: Well, here’s the thing about Obama’s little example here, you have a house on fire. And Obama says, ‘Put it out, put out the fire!’ That’s always a good idea, think you’d agree with me there, Chris.
CALLER: Absolutely.
RUSH: Putting out a fire is a good idea. But there are still some arsonists running around the neighborhood and they’ve got gasoline and they’ve got matches.
CALLER: Amen.
RUSH: And it just so happens, Barack, they are your supporters and they are members of your party. Your party is starting the fire. So you can sit there and say, ‘Put out the fire,’ you can say, ‘Somebody get some water,’ you can say, ‘Put out the fire.’ But until we get your supporters to stop setting the fires, Obama, we’re going to have continual problems. If we don’t catch the people, the arsonists, and stop ’em, more houses are going to burn. You get it, Obama?
CALLER: He doesn’t get it, Rush. But my point was he’s not wanting to put the fire out because it’s the right thing to do. He wants to put the fire out because it might impact his house.
RUSH: Yeah. I can see where you could get that from what he said. But that’s his technique of trying to let people know that he’s concerned about their house.
CALLER: Yeah. I don’t buy it.
RUSH: Not his. But don’t think he doesn’t know what he’s doing, in this regard. Let me tell you something. Look at me. Every Democrat involved in this mess, and you know the names: Dodd, Frank, Pelosi, Durbin, Schumer, Reid, Raines, Johnson, Obama — they all know who’s responsible for this. Every damned one of them knows they are. That is why they are hell-bent to shift the blame here to Wall Street, or, as Obama did today, Halliburton. They are hell-bent on convincing as many people as possible — and they have the Drive-By sycophant media marching in lockstep with their spin on this. They know full well who caused this. They don’t care about the damage that’s been caused here. They don’t want to lose the positions of power they have over these two institutions. They don’t want to lose these institutions, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac. They do not want to lose the political financial power that they have by controlling these two places. They know fully well what they’ve wrecked. There’s no remorse. There is no apology. There is just the shifting of blame. Everything these people try to fix, they make worse.
This is Frank in Orlando. Hello, Frank. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello, sir.
CALLER: Rush, Rush, what a pleasure to talk to you.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: I have three children, and my wife and I are both working two jobs to pay off mortgages. What message are we sending out to those people who are working seven days a week to make ends meet, to pay their mortgage, and now, I’m not getting a bailout, I’m not getting a handout. What message is the government sending to all of us?
RUSH: Well, you want a truthful answer to this?
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: The government is saying to you, ‘Deal with it, you’re part of a majority. We gotta help low income and poor people who can’t afford houses stay in them. It’s only fair. It’s not right you should be able to pay for a mortgage and they shouldn’t be able to have a house. So you keep paying yours, otherwise we’ll foreclose on you.’
CALLER: Exactly.
RUSH: You keep paying your mortgage and you keep paying your credit card bills, you keep paying all this debt you piled up, but these other people, they’ve been treated so badly for so long, they’re not well thought of, they’re the dregs of society, but they vote for the Democrats and it’s just not fair that they don’t have homes and cars and so forth, and we’re going to see to it that you, because you’ve had an unfair advantage as a member of a majority all these years, you’re going to pay to make sure that they get what you have. That’s the message to you, buddy, if you can deal with it.
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RUSH: I want to replay a Barack Obama sound bite from interview yesterday, ABC News John Berman talking to Obama in Reno Nevada. Said, ‘You’re a very persuasive man. You have a certain amount of influence with your own party,’ which I wish to debunk. ”Could you have done more — should you have done more — before the House vote to lobby for votes?’
OBAMA: Oh, absolutely not. Uh, because if you think about it, there was a deal struck between, uhh, Nancy Pelosi and, uh, the Republican leader, Boehner. Uh, the… Uh, the Democrats were supposed to get 120 votes. They got 140. So there was no sense on the Democratic side that we weren’t following through on our commitments. Uh, and apparently there were some problems on that side. I don’t think me calling House Republican members would have been that helpful. I tend not to be that persuasive — heh — on that side of the aisle.
RUSH: They talk about Palin’s interviews with Couric. This guy thinks the question is, he shoulda called Republicans and he’s not going to call Republicans since he’s not that persuasive. He’s not that persuasive with people on that side of the aisle. He’s the great unifier. He represents hope and change, a new America, a new world, but he’s not going to try to persuade Republicans. But here, his answer — and he was handed talking points by Pelosi. Remember, now, that the Congressional Black Caucus voted against the bailout. You mean to tell me, while Obama is sitting here saying, well, you know, I’m not that persuasive with Republicans on the other side of the aisle, you mean to tell me that Barack Obama couldn’t convince most members of the Black Caucus to vote for the bill? If he can’t persuade the Black Caucus and he can’t persuade the Republicans, then what good is he? Maybe Obama can tell us exactly what he did do to try and get the bill passed. Obama says we should all come together, that we should all sacrifice. It seems to me that Obama talks incessantly but does nothing. What else does he do?
Would somebody tell me what he does besides talk? What did he do? Who did he call? He didn’t even sacrifice a minute of campaigning to push this bill. He creates false scenarios to explain his inaction, and if things go well he takes credit for leadership. If nothing gets done, he blames the Republicans. The guy is a fraud. He’s a squirrel, he’s a fraud. Ninety-five Democrats voted for the bill that he says he wanted, and all he needed to do was get about 12 more of them, and he didn’t because he didn’t try because he didn’t want to. And now he wants to take credit if something happens after the fact and wash his hands for something that did not happen. The guy is pathetic. But, folks, I’ll tell you something about this talking business. I saw something today that astounded me. William F. Buckley, the founder of National Review and the father of our modern conservative movement, recently passed away, peace be upon him, has a son, Christopher. Christopher is a writer, a humorist, lives in Washington, DC, and is going to vote Obama.
Mr. Buckley’s son says he’s tempted to vote for Obama because he read his books, and his books are so well written that anybody that can write that well has to be thoughtful. And if he thinks that clearly, and if he’s able to write that well, then maybe he’s worth supporting. Then Christopher Buckley said, but we’d have a problem if he gets in there and starts doing a bunch of liberal things, like raising taxes and so forth. What? I’m reading this and I’m in stunned disbelief. But it opens my eyes to something that we all know and we’ve all become familiar with. I do not have enough hands, fingers, toes, whatever, to count the number of people over the last six years, seven years when I travel around the fruited plain, Republicans and Democrats alike, who get so frustrated that President Bush is not as articulate as they wish he were. The fact that he is not articulate leads people to believe that he’s not intelligent. So here comes Obama, and he’s articulate, he’s ‘elegant,’ one of our commentators said, he’s thoughtful, he’s intellectual, he’s reasoned. I’m telling you, there are a lot of people that are being bamboozled by the ability to speak because they’re ignoring what he’s saying, they’re ignoring who he is, they’re ignoring who his friends are, they’re ignoring his stated agenda and his policies. All that matters is that we have somebody representing the country on television every day as president who sounds smart.
Do not underestimate this as a factor in the way certain people are going to vote. It’s telegenics, it’s television, it’s media, it’s depressing. It’s depressing, is what it is, but this is where we are.