RUSH: We were leading, as we always do, the cutting edge on this — White House now trying to destroy the US Chamber of Commerce as they try to destroy the insurance agencies. Did any of you happen to hear Obama’s radio address, Internet address on Saturday? My friends, it was I think one of the most demagogic, dangerous addresses that I’ve ever heard a president make. I mean it was the ugliest presidential message I’ve ever heard. I’ve got the text of it here. It is just stunning, this attack on the insurance industry, and you’ll note that this is the technique. Every time they try to pass some new kind of legislation or a new law, there always has to be a villain, always must be a demon, and the demon always is a large corporate entity that you deal with. It’s either Big Oil or Big Pharmaceutical, now it’s Big Insurance.
They’re screwing you and they are ripping you off. And until the brave leaders of the world led by Obama come together to protect you from these predators, the world will not be safe nor will you be, when in fact the predators are on the march and they are in most of the governments around the world today and they are running them. It is Barack Obama who is a predator when it comes to the US economy, the private sector. The Chamber of Commerce is now under assault as well. So much so the US Chamber of Commerce, $25 million ad campaign to explain the virtues of freedom, free markets, and entrepreneurism. In the United States of America, $25 million ad campaign, and that ad campaign is coming under assault as well from the Obama administration.
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RUSH: This is starting to become routine now, the State-Controlled Media has fallen for another hoax. Last week the State-Controlled Media — in the sports world and everywhere else — ate up, simply believed two totally fabricated and made-up quotes attributed to me. Today, CNBC and Reuters have fallen for a hoax, as reported by the Politico. ‘In a dramatic shift, the Chamber of Commerce announced Monday that it is throwing its support behind climate change legislation making its way through the US Senate. Only it didn’t. An e-mail press release announcing the change is a hoax, say Chamber officials. Several media organizations fell for it. A CNBC anchor interrupted herself mid-sentence Monday morning to announce that the network had ‘breaking news,’ then cut away to reporter Hampton Pearson, who read from the fake press release.
‘Pearson quickly followed up with a second report saying the ‘so-called bulletin’ was an ‘absolute hoax.’ Smelling a rat, CNBC’s Larry Kudlow demanded to know whether the White House had been involved. In a story posted Monday morning, Reuters declared: ‘The Chamber of Commerce said on Monday it will no longer opposes climate change legislation, but wants the bill to include a carbon tax.’ Reuters updated the story to acknowledge the hoax, but it was too late: The Washington Post and the New York Times had already posted the fake story on their Web sites. Climate legislation supporters say AVAAZ Action Factory is responsible for the release.’
I wonder if they have any connection to a New York law firm. Climate legislation, a ‘group, known for its activist media stunts, has not returned calls for comment. But a post on the group’s website…’ The stunt? So we’ve got a group known for perpetrating ‘stunts,’ and here we have our vaunted and respected State-Controlled Media falling for it without even checking it out! My God, folks, they are worthless! They are worse than worthless; they are harmful. The State-Controlled Media is every bit as responsible for the damage done to this country as is the Obama administration because they are blood brothers. They are partners in it. This is just outrageous! So now the Chamber of Commerce — which is already under assault from the Obama administration — the Chamber of Commerce is already under assault.
They are trying to destroy the Chamber. Next in line will be the Knights of Columbus and then the Lions Club, the Rotary Club, and then they’ll go off on the Shriners. The Chamber of Commerce needs the support of every American who gives a damn about free markets, private property, and fears of creeping fascism. This country cannot afford for the insurance industry to cave. This country cannot afford for the Chamber of Commerce to cave. The Chamber of Commerce has been screwed by this administration’s policies and now the Chamber is the enemy and a hoax that they had changed their minds and are supporting cap and trade gets reported by the Washington Post, New York Times, Reuters and CNBC. A hoax! From an e-mail, a single e-mail!
How do these people look in the mirror every day and call themselves the great protectors and guardians of what is news? ‘The Internet is just a sewer’? It seems to me they get most of their news from that sewer these days. The Obama administration systematically is destroying this economy, the businesses that make up the Chamber of Commerce, and instead of remorse we get fascism! This tells us everything we need to know about Obama and his associates. It really is amazing. You’ve got companies leaving and trashing the Chamber of Commerce because these companies fear climate change and coming Obama legislation and regulation as they try to escape it. You’ve got the health care industry playing along with Obama on health care reform.
If companies object to anything — like the insurance industry -suddenly they’re a villain, they are a target. There’s a story by the New York Times today about this same infighting in the energy industry with some companies playing ball with Obama for protection and others having the guts to stand up. But more and more people — I don’t care, industries, individuals, whenever they are, more and more of them — just have lost courage. They are not willing to fight for the system that made them prosperous. They’re not willing to fight for the system that built them into the companies they are. They are so scared that they’re playing ball with Obama in hopes that he’ll exempt them in some way from the harm they know will come to others in their business.
An appeaser knows it’s over. An appeaser knows he’s going to get his, he just hopes he’s last in line. We couldn’t found the country today if we had to. There aren’t enough people. Now, that’s not true. There aren’t enough current leaders. We certainly have enough people. I find this just appalling. It has my blood boiling. A hoax e-mail, and the New York Times and Washington Post, CNBC, and Reuters post it that the Chamber has done a 180 on cap and trade. Meanwhile, if the truth be known, Obama is having trouble holding his coalition together on health care. Five different health care plans? They’re out there bragging about it, not one of them is his. This radio address of his, this YouTube address on Saturday was perhaps, ladies and gentlemen, the ugliest presidential message in history. We have two sound bites from it. Here’s the first.
OBAMA: The insurance industry is rolling out the big guns and breaking out their massive war chests to marshal their forces for one last fight to save the status quo. They’re filling the airways with deceptive and dishonest ads, they’re flooding Capitol Hill with lobbyists and campaign contributions, and they’re funding studies designed to mislead the American people. Of course, like clockwork, we’ve seen folks on cable television who know better waving these industry funded studies in the air. We’ve seen industry insiders and their apologists citing these studies as proof of claims that just aren’t true. It’s smoke and mirrors, it’s bogus, and it’s all too familiar.
RUSH: The president of the United States is calling out yet another industry — after calling out doctors, after calling out the drug companies. Pricewaterhouse did this survey that’s got him so upset and the reason he’s so upset is because they came out with the truth, that his plan will lead to $4,000 in new taxes and bills. If he gets this plan, if he gets this health care plan, it’s $4,000 minimum in new premiums! When President Obama sits here and says, ‘Studies designed to mislead the American people,’ he may as well be talking about himself and everybody in his administration. ‘Like clockwork, we have seen folks on cable TV who know better waving these-industry-funded studies…’ Let me tell you something, Mr. President. Anybody with half a brain knows that whatever you come up with is going to cost much more than what you even say it is. There’s not one government program that’s ever come in on budget or under budget or on time. There’s not one government program that has worked as designed — and the unintended consequences of all these programs are too numerous to mention. Here’s a second portion of Obama’s remarks.
OBAMA: Every time we get close to passing reform, the insurance companies produce these phony studies as a prescription and say, ‘Take one of these and call us in a decade.’ Well, not this time. The fact is, the insurance industry is making this last-ditch effort to stop reform, even as costs continue to rise and our health care dollars continue to be poured into their profits, bonuses and administrative costs that do nothing to make us healthy; that often actually go toward figuring out how to avoid covering people. And they’re earning these profits and bonuses while enjoying a privileged exception from our anti-trust laws, a matter that Congress is rightfully reviewing.
RUSH: Once again let’s go after profits, let’s go after bonuses, and let’s threaten another American industry. It is thuggish behavior. Now, I don’t care… You know, I know a lot of you in this audience don’t like big business. I know a lot of you can cite rhyme and reason and give examples how you think you’ve been ripped off and so forth. That’s one thing. But it is simply un-American for an administration to target industry after industry after industry after industry for trying to protect itself against his takeover of that industry, which is what this is about. He wants to run them out of business, and it’s their right to stay in business. Many of them are caving.
The dirty little secret is that the insurance industry is not his problem when it comes to health care. His problem is he’s got every different coalition on his side of the aisle opposed to it for one reason or another. There isn’t a public option in it, it doesn’t fund abortions, it does fund abortions, it’s going to make union members pay more. I saw the headline the other day: ‘Middle Class Workers Should Not Have to Pay for the Uninsured.’ It was about union workers upset at one of these five different plans that Obama is touting out there. (interruption) It was Baucus’ plan. Baucus plan. Everybody’s going to face higher taxes to pay for the uninsured, and the union guys don’t think they should have to. ‘Well, Obama’s our buddy! Why, that’s not going to happen.’
That’s what he bet it all on, and he’s losing. And he knows he is losing. He’s losing with his base. He is losing with his party. He cannot get two of his biggest union supporters, the SEIU and the AFSCME, to agree with each other about this. He can’t get the Senate to agree with the House! He cannot even get the most liberal senators to agree with the less liberal senators. He does not have a plan. He has five congressional plans, none of which agree with each other. He said, ‘For the first time ever, all five committees in Congress responsible for the health reform have passed a version of legislation.’ For the first time? Five different versions? Why not throw in a Republican plan so Obama could pronounce we have six different versions, then? This is a mess.
And the president who smiles better than any president in our history launches a vicious, bald-faced, demagogic attack on straw men. These no-approval polls reveal that his previous attacks blaming Republicans didn’t work so now he’s blaming it on insurance companies, after blaming it on doctors, after blaming it on the drug companies. Mr. President, if I may: The fault lies in the five plans. All of your domination of TV time has not made a case for a single plan. There are five different plans. You can’t figure out which way to go. It’s Democrats and Democrats’ constituencies and voting blocs that are the problem here.
It ain’t talk radio, and it ain’t Fox News, and you can try to distract everybody from your plunging support on health care all you want by picking a fight with Fox News — and you can pick a fight with me, and you can send your NFL buddies after me and do all you want. But we cannot allow you to get away with covering up the fact that it is you, sir, who are failing. The great unifier, Barack Obama, can’t even put the elements of his own party together on the same page to support what he bet the ball game on: Health care. They are on the defensive on this, folks. Do not fall prey to the sordid trash that is disguised as news today, ’cause it is nothing but sordid trash no matter where you get it. In a newspaper, on a television, in sports magazine. It doesn’t matter where you get it. It is trash, drivel, and garbage.
The fact is they’re on the defensive. This health care thing is ballgame. So keep attacking the insurance companies. You keep attacking all these straw dogs. We are going to keep pointing out the real problem and real solutions, such as portability of private insurance plans from state to state so you can put all these 1700 insurance companies competing with each other to lower premiums. Just because you live in Alabama doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be able to buy a plan from a company in Missouri, but you can’t right now. We’re also talking tort reform, reduction in defensive medicine, real competition among the 1300 to 1700 insurance companies. Let ’em compete across state lines! Consumer control, the kind of reforms that would really reform. As for his vicious attacks on insurance companies, I have a suggestion, sir.
If you’re going to attack insurance companies, would you please attack those in Iran and Afghanistan and in North Korea and the Taliban insurance company and the Venezuelan insurance company? You know, our real enemies, sir? The really enemies of this country are not Fox News, talk radio, Rush Limbaugh, you name it. Our foreign policy is falling apart. This Afghanistan thing is spinning out of control and we’re letting lug heads like John Kerry and Joe Biden dictate what the hell is going to happen there. Folks, it is a disaster mess that we’re in (sigh) and the business that was once the safeguard against all this has thrown in its lot with the Obama administration, and whatever character and integrity they used to have is now almost all gone.
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RUSH: And, ladies and gentlemen, another sound explanation on why Obamacare is a fraud. It is from the Denver Post today. The headline: ‘Colorado Insurers Say Health Care Bill Would Lead to ‘System Collapse’ — Executives, who critics say are using scare tactics, contend proposed penalties for opting out are too low. Colorado insurance executives, cautious supporters of health care reform throughout the past year, are now warning that current proposals could cause a ‘system collapse.’ At issue are what insurance companies consider absurdly low penalties for people who choose not to buy health insurance.’ See, this is the dirty little secret. If you want somebody to sound irritated at an insurance company I’ll do it for you right now. They were all for it when they thought people’s penalty for not having insurance would guarantee a bunch of people having to go out and buy policies. Then the White House got wind that people were on to that scheme so they lowered — in publicity only — they lowered what the fine would be. And the insurance companies, ‘Well, that fine is not low enough to motivate people to go buy a policy because the fine is cheaper than the policy,’ so now some insurance companies are starting to back out of this.
Their concern: People will buy insurance only when they desperately need it, such as after they’re diagnosed with cancer or heart disease.’ Well, common sense thing to do. ‘Healthy people might choose to pay the penalty, now proposed at a few hundred dollars per year, because it is far less expensive than buying insurance.’ See, this is what happens when the government tries to control actions with centralized control instead of letting market forces influence decisions. There is no one to pay for the people who need it. Every time they reach their grubby little hands into the private sector and try all this command and control it botches things worse than they could ever be botched if the private sector were left alone. Look at what’s happening to us here. I mean we’re trucking along here just fine, all of a sudden here comes Obama, massive reform that, believe me, has as its endgame the elimination of private insurance. That’s what these clowns in the insurance business had better realize and fast. They’re getting distracted here by how big the penalty is going to be for not having insurance and what that will mean to them in terms of selling policies. You people in the insurance industry had better understand something real fast, and I hope you do now that Obama has trained federal government big guns on you.
The objective is your end. The objective is to have a giant public option and have it be so cheap at first that companies will automatically off-load all of their employees onto it. You friends of mine in the insurance industry, you can sit around there, you can finesse this or debate this on the margins but you’re being distracted. What is really at risk here is the survival of your industry. Obama may let one or two of you hang on just for the illusion that there’s some private sector competition going on, but the truth of the matter is, everybody’s going to be steered to the public option. That’s all this is about. It’s not about anything else. It’s not even really about health care. It’s not about improving health care. It’s about Obama and the Democrat Party controlling everybody’s future, regulating their freedom and their lives and putting the insurance industry out of business.
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