RUSH: Guess who has become the latest capitalist? John Kerry! I’m not surprised. Half hour ago, Andrea Mitchell, NBC News, Washington, on her MSNBC show, interviewed Senator Kerry (who, by the way, served in Vietnam) about the Citibank news that they’re going to be giving out 50% raises. Yeah, 50% raises. And her question to Lurch was, ‘Finance and banking committees in the Senate, are you disturbed that Citibank’s about to award big pay raises, perhaps to get around the bonus requirements? I mean, Citibank took TARP money. Should they be awarding big pay raises? They’re not earning money. Their stock price is down. Should they be awarding big pay raises, or is that, as they say, ‘what they need to do to compete’?’
KERRY: Look, we understand in the normal course of business people have to be paid appropriately. There is competition in the marketplace. You have to attract good people. All those things are true. But you also need to do these things within the limits of — of what people perceive, of what the marketplace will bear in terms of a sense of appropriateness and decency given the challenges that our economy faces and we hope that people will respond appropriately.
RUSH: What a 180! What an absolute 180. Back last fall when we were bailing these people out, John Kerry (who served in Vietnam, by the way) was bashing all of these Wall Street entities, all of these banks. Now all of a sudden, ‘Well, you know, they gotta pay a lot of people, and gotta pay good people, and they gotta pay ’em appropriately. It’s competition in the marketplace.’ That’s all fine now! It’s all fine when the Democrats and Obama are running the show. I’m telling you, folks, this is going to filter out to the average Obama voter. This is not what the average Obama voter thought he or she was voting for, to make Citibank rich, to make Goldman Sachs rich. Forget whether they’re right or wrong for a second here. I’m not concerned with whether or not these Obama voters understand capitalism or not. In this instance — and I remain influenced by that bunch of calls we got last week from Obama voters who were livid.
They thought they were going to be getting all this money and they just see Obama doing what Republicans have done: bail out the banks, bail out the big rich people. Well, now, with the Goldman Sachs and their big bonuses and their ‘record first half of ’09,’ whatever it was; now Citibank 50% raises to get around the bonus requirements, limitations? And Democrats now talking about, ‘Well, yeah, we have to do this.’ See, back in the early days of the administration, when AIG was doing this, it was time to hang ’em and burn ’em at the stake and send ACORN up there to protest on the lawns of the homes of the executives at AIG! Now, ‘Weeeell, we gotta pay people. It’s a competitive business out there. We gotta pay people, good people.’ It’s all fine now. I’m going to tell you what we’re looking at here, folks. Democrats don’t get it.
We’re looking at Jimmy Carter 2. We’re looking at it. We’re right on the cusp of it. Warren Buffett’s told us today that the economy is going to be in shambles. We’re going to see at some point — if I’m right about this, and I’m seldom wrong, we are going to see — an approval number chart that’s going to track pretty close to old Jimmy Carter. The Democrats are arrogant. They are condescending. They make the mistake of believing that every American lives and breathes and hopes and dreams on what Democrats are going to do each and every day, and that they are insulated and insured against any criticism because of this lapdog media that follows them around. You watch. You watch. This health care thing, too. They’re going to have more problems with this. And what they’ve done to Gerald Walpin, this is coming out, too. The inspector general in the St. Hope Academy case, AmeriCorp, they tried to ruin this guy. This is Clinton travel office all over again. Like I said last week, this is just like the Clinton travel office. They’re just getting rid of somebody who’s a thorn in their side. The St. Hope Academy was a mess out there. They shouldn’t have got the money; Walpin said they shouldn’t have gotten the money. They were misusing it. So they get rid of Walpin. This kind of stuff is — and they’re trying too much, too soon. Obama is on television every day, this and that and the other thing now. At some point there’s going to be a lot of give here. I’m confident of this. Keep a sharp eye.