RUSH: It’s a big day today if you have an Apple iPhone. It’s also a big day today if you’re unemployed. If you’re unemployed President Barack Obama says that the fastest way to get you a job is to nationalize health care, single-payer health care. Now, let me ask those of you who are unemployed. Let me amend that. Those of you who are unemployed who don’t want to be, those of you who are unemployed who want a job and you turn on the television or the radio and you hear President Obama says he’s thinking about you. The recession is a bit worse than what he knew because he inherited such a mess, but there’s a fast fix for this, and that is health care. We gotta get health care spending in line; that will enable you to find a job.
Is that going to make you confident? How soon do you think national health care is going to happen, even if they succeed in passing it? How soon will it be implemented? Do you want to wait a year for a job? And, by the way, the dirty little secret: if they succeed with national health care as Obama and the Democrats want it, you face the prospect of being joined on the unemployment line by even more people because the incentive for businesses that will be mandated with providing it will be to fire people in order stay in business, in order to stay in business, they’re going to have to lay off more people. Now, anybody with a brain knows this. It’s time to start asking, what does Obama really want with all of these programs of his?
What is he really trying to accomplish? Is he really trying to put you back to work? Is he really trying to create jobs in a thriving, growing private sector economy? Because if he is, he’s the biggest idiot on the face of the earth. Because this is not how you do it. If he is trying to do it and he’s not a big idiot, he’s doing it on purpose. And if he’s doing it on purpose, we need to then ask: Why? For what purpose would President Obama want to destroy the private sector economy? For what purpose would Barack Obama want to destroy free market economics. Well, there’s always the old saw that he wants to return the nation’s wealth to its ‘rightful owners.’ Some have speculated he wants an ever-expanding welfare state with more and more average, middle-class people on the government dole because that’s government dominance. That’s control. That’s statism. I, for one, don’t think he’s stupid.
I think he’s been poorly educated, I think he’s angry and cold. But IQ-wise he’s not stupid. He’s been told. He has been told things as he’s grown up and been educated, that make the difference between him and Mikhail Gorbachev scant. They both believe in command-control economies, because capitalism is unfair. It’s unjust. It’s immoral. And he’s going to straighten that out. Folks, this is dire, what is happening here. We are down to the wire on stopping this. I’m not saying it can’t be rolled back at some point down the road but if they get national health care that’s going to be tough to undo — and national health care is the single biggest intervention in liberty this government could conceive. Because every aspect of your life can be regulated on the theory that it will control costs of health care. Here are some sound bites of President Obama in Washington this afternoon before meeting with his cabinet.
OBAMA: On Friday we learned that we had lost an additional 345,000, uh, jobs in the month of May. That was far less than was expected, uh, but it’s still too many. We’re still in the middle of a very deep recession, uh, that was years in the making and that’s going to take, uh, aconsiderable amount of time for us —
RUSH: Stop the tape. And there we have once again the unseemly, embarrassing, childish, ‘It’s his fault! It’s his fault! Don’t blame me, it’s his fault.’ We’re ‘in the middle of a very deep recession…years in the making.’ ‘I had nothing to do with it! I had nothing to do with these things don’t blame me.’ You had everything to do with it, sir. This recession is yours. You have taken what was going wrong and you have amplified it and multiplied it. It is time, ladies and gentlemen — it is crucial — to link Obama’s plans and actions to his failures, because now they are becoming apparent. His failures are even admitted by him. They’re not called failures, but this cabinet meeting today to ratchet up and speed up stimulus spending is an admission the first stimulus spending didn’t work, that TARP didn’t work, that the bailouts haven’t worked. If we have to speed it up, it hasn’t worked. That’s the conclusion of logic. He concedes that it’s a recession he inherited, that now worse than he even knew. Moving on to the next sound bite…
OBAMA: Okay, when we arrived here, uh, we were confronting the most significant recession since the Great Depression. It was bad and it was —
RUSH: Stop the tape! Second time he said it in a period of two minutes. ‘When we arrived here, we were confronting the most significant recession since the Great Depression.’ Wrongo. When he arrived there, the recession of ’80, ’81, ’82, was that depression worse than anything since the Depression. Obama’s policies have now led us to a point where we are in the same dire straits we were 25 years ago. Not 45 years ago or 60 years, whatever, in the Great Depression. The man cannot tell the truth. He has to dump on predecessors all the while his own policies are to blame and are solely responsible for the deteriorating economic circumstances that Americans face today.
OBAMA: — getting worse. Had we done nothing, uh, I think it’s fair to say that most economists, uh, believe, uh, we could have, uh, really gone into a tailspin.
RUSH: Stop the tape. There’s the old famous straw-man argument. Nobody ever said, ‘Let’s do nothing.’ Nobody said, ‘Let’s do nothing.’ What he has done has put us into the tailspin. This is the point that must reverberate coast to coast, town to town, city to city, border to border. What Barack Obama has done, what his administration has done has put us in the tailspin.
OBAMA: We decided to move swiftly and boldly, uh, and I signed the Recovery Act, uh, into law just over a hundred days ago. Uh, and we’ve done more than ever, faster than ever, more responsibly than ever to get the gears of the economy moving again —
RUSH: That’s just a flat-out, out-and-out lie, and there is no other way to characterize it. The Recovery Act? We’ve done more than ever, faster than ever? Yes, ‘to destroy the US economy,’ if you want to add that, then it’s a true statement. Barack Obama has done more than ever, faster than ever to single-handedly put this economy into a tailspin — and anybody with a brain knows this. You don’t need a Ph.D. in economics to understand this. All you need is a pair of eyes — and if you’re blind, be able to hear and listen. You can see all the spin this economy is in precisely because of his moving faster, better, whatever than ever before. Here’s the rest of the bite.
OBAMA: — created and saved as you said, Joe, at least 150,000 jobs.
RUSH: Do you believe that? We have unemployment at 9.4%. We have lost 600,000, 600,000, 600,000, 600,000, and 345,000 jobs month to month to month, and they have the audacity to make up a totally contrived figure that cannot be documented of 150,000 jobs ‘saved’ or created? In the midst of two million jobs lost! Two million jobs have been lost since January, and he has a meeting today to talk about how great his policies are that created and saved 150,000 jobs? You can go to any Obama website you want and you will not find any documentation or any references to these 150,000 jobs. The Obama people predicted unemployment would top out at 8%. It’s now at 9.4%, on its way to a minimum of 10%. Here now the piece de resistance of the three sound bites.
OBAMA: Now we’re in a position to really accelerate this. So the goal here is that we’re gonna create —
RUSH: What, what, what? Cue that back up. ‘Now we’re in a position to really accelerate…’ Accelerate what? Economic decline? How can you accelerate it beyond what it is? Of course he doesn’t mean that, but that’s been the practical result of his programs, plans, and policies. What is it? Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt. ‘Okay, now we can really accelerate now to turn this thing around, why now?’ What about now makes it a good position to really accelerate? What is it, that we bottomed out, that it can’t get any worse? Oh, wait and see how much worse it’s going to get if he gets what he wants. ‘Now we’re in a position to really accelerate…’? Well, I remember back in October-November, if we didn’t act in 24 hours the country was history with the TARP and financial sector bailout, AIG, blah, blah, blah. And the Republicans opposed it the first time, two weeks went by, the country was fine and dandy. Nobody lived a different life. There was nothing substantively any different, and we were told we have 24 hours. Then we move forward to January, ‘Gotta get the stimulus bill done, man! That stimulus, we gotta get this done. We don’t have time to waste. We have to act now. We are near a catastrophe,’ and so now here we are six months later, five months later. We are in an economic tailspin brought about precisely because of Obama’s policies, and ‘now we’re going to really accelerate’ … ‘create or save 600,000 jobs over the next hundred days’? Wasn’t that the promise the first hundred days? It’s impossible to calculate a ‘saved job’ anyway. Here’s the rest of the bite.
OBAMA: Now we’re in a position to really accelerate. So the goal here is that we’re going to create or save 600,000 jobs over the next 100 days — keeping teachers in the classroom, cops on the streets, providing summer jobs for youth that are particularly hard hit in this job market, breaking ground on hundreds of new projects all across the country, and clean energy and transportation and so on. And we’re going to do it continuing to, uhhh, operate in a, uh, transparent fashion so that taxpayers know this money is not being wasted on a bunch of boondoggles. Uhhh, and — and I think that, you know, sometimes good news comes in what you don’t hear about. And you haven’t heard, uh, a bunch of scandals knock on — knock on wood —
RUSH: Wait just a second.
OBAMA: — so far.
RUSH: Just a second. Wasn’t it just last week that Vice President Biden warned us of all the scams in the stimulus bill? Just last week, Vice President Biden warned us of all the scams and said you can’t really stop ’em. It’s inherent in this kind of spending with this kind of money. So now we have a new benchmark for success, and that is no reported scandals, ‘knock on wood.’ Well, I guarantee you there will not be any reported scandals with a state-run, government-controlled media reporting on all of this and treating the president of the United States as a god.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I don’t want to play the sound bite again. I don’t need to play it again. I can just remind you, in the last sound bite that we played Barack Obama said that good things are sometimes the things you don’t hear about. Like no scandals, knock on wood. The good things that are happening, sometimes you don’t even hear about them. It seems to me that back during the Bush administration, when it was pointed out that we had not had a terrorist attack on this soil since 9/11, that that was ridiculed, impugned, laughed at. We didn’t hear about a new terrorist attack, that was good news. The Bush administration was — no, no, no, no, that wasn’t allowed. But now the things we are not hearing about. I don’t care what we’re not hearing about. The things we are hearing about are disastrous. The personal human lives that have been discarded by the US economy, with no hope of a job any time soon, from the party and the president that cares more than anybody about the little guy.
How about the election returns in the European Union? Here’s a story from the Financial Times: ”Socialists Across Continent Left Licking Wounds’ — European socialists were left in disarray on Sunday night after failing to capitalize on a historic economic and financial crisis to harvest disaffected voters in parliamentary elections.’ Sarkozy did gangbusters. Merkel did gangbusters. Let me ask you, where is the State-Run Media with stories today about what essentially is the Obama agenda being rejected by European socialist countries? Right-wingers won election all across the European Union. Here is a quote from this story: ‘Some socialists have even spoken of possibly changing their name to ‘Democrats.” The name socialist, the word socialist, they thought, harmed their reelection chances. ‘The thinking is that a different title might help the group, particularly in eastern Europe.’ Which then, of course, begs the question why don’t the Democrats in this country change their name to socialists?
Let’s go to the phones. We’ll start in Fort Myers, Florida. This is David. Thank you for calling, sir, you’re up on the EIB Network. Hi.
CALLER: Good afternoon, Rush. First-time caller and listener since the TV days.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: I just want to bring up the unemployment rate, like many of my other colleagues in southwest Florida I was involved in the real estate market, and those of us in real estate and mortgage broking and so on were independent contractors, therefore the thousands of us across this country were never eligible for unemployment, those figures are never counted. I just wondered just how artificially low that unemployment rate is, and the second point is that the unemployment rate being a lagging indicator, if the economy was this bad months ago, and it’s getting worse, just where are we going with the unemployment rate?
RUSH: Well, the real unemployment rate is about 14 or 16%, 15.9%, I saw this week. The numbers that are not tabulated are the people who have given up trying to find jobs. The real unemployment rate is skyrocketing high. You gotta hear these next two sound bites from Obama, by the way. This is March 3rd of this year, Barack Obama with Prime Minister Gordon Brown from Britain. They’re speaking to the press. This is a little bit of what Obama said.
OBAMA: What I’m looking at is not the day-to-day gyrations of the stock market, but the long-term ability for the United States and the entire world economy to regain its footing. And, you know, the stock market is sort of like a tracking poll in politics. It bobs up and down day to day, and if you spend all your time worrying about that then you’re probably going to get the long-term strategy wrong.
RUSH: Bottom line, Obama pays no attention to the stock market, it’s a tracking poll, you pay attention to that your long-term strategy is going to be skewed, I don’t care about the stock market. He said that when it was plummeting. This afternoon in Washington he said this about the stock market.
OBAMA: Although we’ve seen some stabilizing in the financial markets and the credit spreads have gone down, you know, we’re — we’re seeing a reduction in the fear that gripped the market just a few months ago, stock market’s up a little bit.
RUSH: So back in March he didn’t care about the stock market when it was plummeting. Ah, you can’t look at that. It goes up and down, a tracking poll, I mean I’ve been in politics, you watch tracking polls, you can get taken off your game, you lose sight of the big picture. Now, with nothing of any substance that is optimistic or good to be able to hang his hat on regarding the US economy, he goes to the stock market, hey, you know what, stock market’s up a little bit, stock market looking pretty good out there. What is the stock market? We are down 104 points. The stock market down 104 as of a couple minutes ago, and he just said it’s up a bit?
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, the economic disaster, the tailspin, the destruction of the greatest economic engine in the history of the world, these policies of Barack Obama’s, which have led us to this point, are precisely why I fearlessly said and still say, I hope he fails. Barack Obama failing to implement all this equals America surviving. That’s why I want him to fail. I want my country to survive, thrive and succeed, as well as many people in this country surviving, thriving, and succeeding as possible. So today Barack Obama, (paraphrasing) ‘It’s really bad out there, unemployment, it’s really bad, we gotta speed up the stimulus, ah, we gotta speed it up, I mean, it’s called for now.’ But May 27th, basically a little over a week ago, in Los Angeles.
OBAMA: When you look at the economy right now, I think it’s safe to say that we have stepped back from the brink, that there is some calm that didn’t exist before.
RUSH: It doesn’t matter what this man says. What this man says is irrelevant. How he says it is all that matters. Today, we have to ratchet up, speed up stimulus spending. We gotta go out there and create or save — hardy-har-har — 600,000 new jobs lickety-split, right now. I inherited a bigger mess than I thought I’d inherited, blah, blah, blah. May 27th, why, we’re coming back from the brink now, step back from the brink. There’s some calm in the economy that didn’t exist before. What was that statement on May 27th worth? As much as the paper I have crumpled up and now toss in the trash can. That’s what it was worth. Might have been worth to the dunces in Hollywood to whom he was speaking, but in terms of its value to the American people and the economy, worthless words.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Now, Snerdley thinks I’m going to be accused of ‘talking down the economy.’ I hope so. I really hope so. Let them accuse me of ‘talking down the economy’ because what I’m doing is simply chronicling reality. This economy is tanking, brought about precisely and directly because of the policies of Obama and his administration. It is crucial to link Obama’s policies and his plans to his failures, because those failures are now becoming apparent. He has gotten away with no consequences to any of his plans, any of his promises for too long. The consequences are coming in. Attaching Obama to his failures is the only way we’re going to stop national health care.