RUSH: Why… is… he… uh… talking… uh… this… way? He’s even got a teleprompter in there and he’s still talking like that. He’s putting a period not at the end of every sentence, but at the end of every word. I’m talking about Obama and this abomination of a press conference.
JOHNNY DONOVAN: And now, from sunny South Florida, it’s Open Line Friday!
RUSH: Yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yahoo. He said he wanted to close Guantanamo Bay sooner but we missed the deadline. We… missed… the… dead…line. This thing’s been going on for over an hour, and… that’s… why. He’s putting a period at the end of every word.
Greetings, folks, ready to have you here, telephone number if you want to be on the program. 800-282-2882, and the e-mail address, ElRushbo@eibnet.com.
There are no previously uninsured people who are being uninsured. That hasn’t kicked in yet, and yet the costs are still going up. And the government’s out there saying, ‘Don’t blame us. Blame insurance companies.’ The insurance company says, ‘Don’t blame us. Blame the government.’ And the people walking into the free clinics, ‘How much is this gonna cost? I thought it was free.’ Obama said, ‘No, we never said it was going to be free.’ What Obama said was, insuring the uninsured was gonna make costs go down, because we were paying for them anyway but now we were gonna get ’em insured and somehow this was gonna make ’em go down. This has been incoherent. I had a friend of mine send me a note: ‘Why… is… he… talking… like… this… throughout… the… press… conference?’ I said, ‘Obviously there’s no prompter there, he’s unsure of himself.’ There is a prompter! There’s a picture of Jacob Tapper in the East Room, and there’s a prompter over his shoulder, what looks like the corner. So somebody is feeding Obama answers, and maybe… the… prompter… is… rolling… slow. He’s got a prompter at a press conference. I was trying to cut him some slack, there’s no prompter in there, but obviously there is.
Jake Tapper asked him about the fringe figure in Florida, the minister with the flock of 50. And Jake Tapper said, ‘Why are you elevating this guy? He’s clearly somebody on the fringe.’ And Obama said, ‘Burning the sacred text of another person’s religion is contrary to our religion.’ What religion is ours? I didn’t know that we had a religion. If he said that, that would be newsworthy because I don’t think we have a national religion. I might have misheard this ’cause as… he… was… talking… like… this… I’m sitting there going nuts. Would you please speed it up! He’s an hour and ten minutes into this. Why do one of these press conferences an hour before this program starts knowing full well I’m going to have all this time to dissect it?
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RUSH: Obama kept complaining about the Republicans in this press conference, can’t get anything done because of the Republicans. He’s got 59 Senate Democrats, he has 255 Democrats in the House — all he needs is 219, 214, whatever it is — and the Republicans are to blame. This foretells exactly why I don’t think he cares if the Democrats lose the House, or even Senate, in November. I mean, he’s trying to blame the Republicans; can’t stop him on anything. Maybe in the Senate with Scott Brown, depending on how he goes, but, I mean, Jake Tapper was right (paraphrase): ‘Mr. President, how come so many Democrats running for reelection are campaigning, running ads, against health care?’ You should’ve heard that wandering answer! ‘Well, uh, you know, uh, uh, uh, e-lec-tions, uh, well, uh’ — ‘impotent’ is the word to describe this. The more Obama talks, the less he becomes…
But I tell you, the more he spoke in this press conference, the less he became. What we have here is a man wandering aimlessly in vain search of a thought in this press conference today. He has no answers for his failures, none, other than it was really bad when I got here and if I hadn’t done what I’ve done, why, we’d be even worse now. Bush this, Bush that. (interruption) Oh. Okay, I’ll do that. I’ll summarize his opening remarks before he got to the questions (paraphrase): ‘We believe in government. We believe in regulations. We don’t believe in free markets. We have good intentions, and those that oppose our Central Planning don’t. Progress is slow.’ That’s how he started it out. That’s essentially what he said.
And then he gave a really over-the-top good-bye to Christina Romer. I think he might be trying to buy her silence. I mean, she has nothing — no great shakes here, no great service, but he just talked about this woman as the greatest thing that ever happened to economics, and she splits the scene, heads back to Berkeley. And then another professor has been named to replace her at the Council of Economic Advisors, Austan Goolsbee, and the Washington Post has a story, he’s the funniest man in the administration. This guy is a dryball! This guy makes watching bread bake exciting, and they say he’s the funniest guy in the administration. Austan Goolsbee is the new chairman of the economic advisors.
Tomorrow, Obama says, we’re going to be commemorating the heartbreak of 9/11. The heartbreak 9/11? With a day of service. A day of service. He said that last year, too. Wants to turn this into a day of service, where people give their time to the government. He said, middle class — this is at 11:10, about ten minutes into the press conference — middle-class families have been struggling for a decade before I got into office, which is… decades! He rips Clinton as well, not just Bush. And then he said, ‘For all the progress that we’ve made, we’re not there yet.’ What progress? That’s a good question.
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RUSH: Second question that Obama got from a Reuters reporter. Says he cannot understand why he can’t get a small business bill passed. Says it’s been over two months. He said he can’t understand why he can’t get it passed. That looks weak. Impotent. He’s got huge majorities. His party owns Congress. He can’t get anything done. Third question. He lamented that he can’t get Democrats and Republicans to agree on a beefed-up highway bill. That makes him look impotent as well. He says he ought to be trying to stimulate growth and jobs, but he’s failed to do that so far. I’m paraphrasing this, but this is how it all came out. (paraphrase) ‘I’m concerned about a lot of Senate confirmations these days. I can’t get a vote on it.’ Well, more impotence. He’s got historically high majorities in his party in the Congress, and he can’t get votes.
Look it. This election year, everybody wants to get reelected, and the Democrats are telling us exactly what the American people think of the Obama regime: they don’t want to be tied to it in any way, shape, manner, or form because it is a huge failure as far as the country is concerned. And then F. Chuck Todd came in there, ‘How do you change Washington?’ I can answer: Obama made it bigger! But he says he hasn’t been able to do much.
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RUSH: You know what essentially the Democrat campaign slogan is this campaign, this election? ‘It woulda been even worse without us.’ Now, you might be able to get tenure at some university by saying, ‘It woulda been worse without me,’ but you don’t get elected to office by saying it, which is what they’re essentially going to have to say, which is what Obama’s press conference today is all about, (imitating Obama) ‘Well, it would have been much worse if we hadn’t implemented the ideas and policies that we did.’ Most of the questions in the presser today seemed to have a common theme, and the theme was, ‘Why have you failed? Why haven’t you delivered on what you promised? Why haven’t you changed –‘ Well, they didn’t use the word. ‘Why haven’t you changed Washington?’ You know, why haven’t the sea levels sunk? F. Chuck Todd said, ‘How do you change Washington?’ Obama made Washington bigger. He says, well, he’s not been able to change Washington. He says it’s frustrating that he hasn’t been able to change Washington. The economy was bad, the Republicans are to blame, and I haven’t been able to change things. I really wish I could. I thought just by virtue of his aura and presence things were going to change.
Okay, so here are my questions if I had been an accredited journalist at the Obama press conference today. ‘If the Ground Zero mosque is built, Mr. President, will you assist with the ribbon cutting or will you send Michelle Obama to assist with the ribbon cutting at the mosque? How will you handle that?’ Number two: ‘What’s been more difficult since you were immaculated: fadeaway jump shot from the three-point line or keeping the ball in the fairway off the tee?’ ‘Referring to the Gulf oil leak, Mr. President, you said your daughter asked you while shaving, ‘Did you plug the whole yet, Daddy?’ Mr. President, anybody in the family ever ask you if you created a private sector job yet, Daddy? Anybody ask you why Democrats don’t want to appear with you in public and won’t advertise their votes on Obamacare and the stimulus bill?’ Of course Jake Tapper did ask him that.
‘How would you answer your daughter, Mr. President, if she said, ‘Why are so many Democrats in favor of extending the Bush tax cuts, daddy?’ You felt the need to appoint a commission to advise you how to cut the deficit that you and Pelosi and Reid created. You have a secretary of state that says your deficits are a national security threat.’ We talked about this yesterday. Hillary Clinton categorized them that way. ‘You promised that your $1 trillion stimulus bill would keep unemployment under 8% and now you’re asking for more money because unemployment’s stuck at nearly 10%. Do you realize how ridiculous you sound blaming John Boehner for this?’ I mean these some of the questions that I would ask. ‘Your friend, the domestic terrorist, Bill Ayers, was once photographed in the New York Times proudly standing on an American flag. Would it bother you if he was pictured standing on a Bible or a Koran? And if defiantly standing on the flag, Bible, or Koran now seems inappropriate to you, why isn’t a mosque backed by an imam who supports terrorist groups such as Hamas offensive to you? I mean, the New York Times has had pictures of Muslims burning Bibles and standing on the American flag in Gaza and elsewhere, and this has not cited Americans to riot, yet, Mr. President, you agree with the imam that if some Korans are burned that it’s natural to expect that our troops will be in danger and that the militant Muslims are going to rise up out there. Isn’t this a tantamount admission that our whole policy in this area is ridiculously flawed?’
That’s just some of the stuff that I would ask. I mean, really, ‘impotent’ is the word that it would use. I… could… not… believe… the… way… he… was… I mean, people have told me the way William Shatner used to do his lines like that. I know William Shatner, I’ve gotten know William Shatner, Barack Obama has never sounded like he sounded today, not even when he was Spock, or Kirk. William Shatner when he recited his lines in Boston Legal, rat-tat-tat, some of the funniest, I don’t know what people are talking about William Shatner sounding like Obama today. Well, I know, there was no um or uh, with William Shatner. Speaking of Castro, this guy’s press conferences, Obama’s becoming more tedious than Castro’s.
Crystal in Irvine, California. Nice to have you on the EIB Network. Hi.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. I was just watching a couple minutes of the press conference, and Obama said that Afghanistan is the second poorest country in the world. Did you hear that?
RUSH: No.
RUSH: They lie to suit the occasion. They do. He was asked during this press conference, ‘You haven’t captured Bin Laden yet.’
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: And Afghanistan is the focus of some military efforts now that he owns, and look, he’s a liberal. It’s natural he looks at suffering. That’s all he sees —
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: — anywhere in the world, and to just come outta nowhere with the second poorest country in the world —
CALLER: Yeah, and no one in the press conference said, you know, Ethiopia, Somalia, it’s not even in the top ten.
RUSH: Crystal, they don’t know, either.
CALLER: I know. I know.
RUSH: They only know what the press office tells them in the White House. That’s all they know.
CALLER: I didn’t know if there was a larger point to that. You know, sometimes they lie to set a foundation for some bigger lie, but I thought maybe he just misspoke, maybe he doesn’t know, or maybe —
RUSH: In this case it’s pathological. Whatever you say is true, even if you make it up.
CALLER: And maybe he has to make it so bad and then he’s the savior of Afghanistan.
RUSH: Remember, these people are all about creating victims.
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: Everybody is a victim and the bigger victim you are — but you’re right, Afghanistan is the tenth or so poorest country in the world, the other ten, nine are in Africa.
CALLER: Yes. And for someone who’s so well traveled I don’t know how he could mix up 19 with two. Anyway I’m a stay-at-home mom —
RUSH: Speaking of that, well traveled, I wonder if the press is going to go back to his high school yearbook in Kenya and try to find any pictures of people that might be in the news today.
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RUSH: Let me be serious for a moment on this press conference. I mean, obviously I was adding a little flavor, a little vigor to this thing, but folks, we have a serious problem because if you watched this, we’re looking at somebody who is totally out of his league in this job. And this has serious consequences. He looks small up there. He looks small and frail. He looks like a boy, a man-child. A teleprompter at a press conference! A cheat sheet. The pictures I saw of the teleprompter, what was on it were answers about economic questions. He went for an hour and ten minutes and took ten questions. That’s six- or seven-minute answers. Speak…ing… like… uh… this… through…out…the…press con…fer…ence. I just look at this, and it’s scary to me. Seven minutes per question in his answer to this stuff. He looked frail and tiny up there. I have a couple sound bites. This is a question about health care. Jacob Tapper said, ‘A study from February predicted a 6.1% increase, and now they post health care a 6.3% increase, so it seems to be going up.’
RUSH: Did you hear that? Thirty million people…for…free. But he implied that, people walked into health clinics the day after he signed this thing wondering where free health care was. We know damn well the Democrat Party implied this was going to be free, that a bunch of millionaires were going to be paying for this and that costs were going to go down because we had to get costs down because the only way we can save the national debt and reduce the deficit was to pass health care. We’ve seen nothing but rising costs here and there, various states, insurance company policies, medical treatment, costs are skyrocketing. Nothing’s changed in that regard and we haven’t ensured 32 million people yet, that hasn’t kicked in but yet here’s Obama, (imitating Obama) ‘Look, 30 million people, additional health care at the margins, that’s gonna increase costs, we knew that. We didn’t think we were gonna cover 30 million people for free.’ You did to! You told us that covering the 30 million people would bring costs down because they were going to the emergency room now.
You know, this stuff does have consequences. This is not a theory, a game, a conversation over port and cigars in the faculty lounge. This is serious stuff. He touted, ‘Well, I got my start in politics as a community organizer in the shadows of shut-down factories south side of Chicago.’ He’s back to saying he got his start in politics as a community organizer. You put all of this together and we have a frail, small, totally ill-equipped, unequipped for the job, with this massive ego that’s got a grudge against the country, and he’s on some mission to make amends for whatever he thinks the transgressions in the past have been in this country.
Here’s the Q&A with Anne Kornblut, the Washington Post. ‘Nine years after the September 11th attacks, why do you think it is that we’re now seeing such an increase in suspicion and outright resentment of Islam, especially given it’s been one of your priorities to improve relations with the Muslim world?’
OBAMA: One of the things that I most admired about President Bush was after 9/11, him being crystal clear about the fact that we were not at war with Islam. We were at war with terrorists and murderers who had perverted Islam, had stolen its banner to carry out their outrageous acts, and I was so proud of the country rallying around that idea, that notion, that we are not going to be divided by religion. We’re not going to be divided by ethnicity. We are all Americans. We stand together against those who would try to do us harm. And that’s what we’ve done over the last nine years and we should take great pride in that.
RUSH: Well, her question was, ‘Why is there so much more suspicion, resentment of Islam?’ He went to Cairo, big speech in Cairo, was gonna bring us all together. NASA was to be used for Muslim outreach. Now, I do have a question in regards to all this. Mainstream Christians from across the fruited plain have risen up to uniformly publicly denounce the actions of Reverend Jones in Florida. All well and good. I have not seen Muslim counterparts rising up in unison to condemn terrorism. ‘That’s different. That’s different. That’s different, oppressed minority. That’s different.’ Now, what’s happened here is, nobody woulda known about this except the media had nothing to talk about one day so they’re elevating Terry Jones’ burning a couple Korans, and now some other wacko ministers are saying if he doesn’t, I’m going to. There’s a bunch of them out there saying, ‘Well, if he doesn’t do it, I will.’
So AP, the trusty, trustworthy, dependable AP, has sent out a directive to all of their subscribers. By the way, AP is the only wire service out there for all intents and purposes. And AP has sent out a directive. If any Korans are burned on 9/11, we are not going to report it, we are not going to feed any pictures, don’t expect any of that from us. But if somebody happens to trash the American flag or set it on fire we’ll be the first to show you. We will be the first to tell you. You can count on the AP. Somebody stands on the flag; somebody burns a Bible; somebody sets the flag on fire, you can count on us at AP, we’ll be in there. We’ll have the first stories and the first pictures. But don’t look to us for any pictures or graphics of any holy Korans that might erupt in flames on the front lawns of oddball preachers’ churches.
RUSH: I’ll tell you why. I’ll tell you why. I’m getting all kinds of e-mails during the break here: ‘What’s the big deal about Obama’s pace of speaking? What’s the big deal?’ I’ll tell you what the big deal about it is. If it had been Reagan or Bush that… was… talk…ing… like… that, right now the media would have doctors, psychiatrists, they’d be exploring what is medically wrong with the president. That’s why. No. I’m not suggesting there’s anything medically wrong. That’s for you to do. It’s Friday.
JOHNNY DONOVAN: And now, from sunny South Florida, it’s Open Line Friday!
RUSH: Hang on, folks. A little technical problem here. Plug back in. Just a second. There we go. Now I can hear myself. I became decoupled from the cochlear implant, the input, a little mix minus problem. We’re back now. I did that whole open deaf. Didn’t hear one word I said. Did it sound okay? They always told me that if I did not get this implant, if I lost my hearing, that once you can no longer hear yourself speak that you’ll eventually start sounding like people who have never heard, like deaf people. It doesn’t deteriorate that fast, but I just want to double-check. Anyway, we’re back, and here’s the telephone number, 800-282-2882, the e-mail address, ElRushbo@eibnet.com.
If Reagan or Bush had… been… hell, if they of had a teleprompter in a press conference, for crying out loud, particularly Reagan, we’d have the dementia people on there, we’d have the Alzheimer’s people on there, we’d have all kinds of people with the media exploring, ‘What’s wrong with the president? We may be looking at the 22nd Amendment being invoked here. Maybe it’s time for Vice President Biden,’ that kind of thing.
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RUSH: Obama was speaking slowly. I’m sorry to have made a big deal about this. I forgot. He needs a vacation. He hasn’t vacation awhile. I think he’s probably just tired. I probably made too big a deal about it, the halt-ing speech, uh, pat-tern.
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RUSH: You remember shortly after the Obama press conference I was doing a brief recap and review, and I happened to casually mention that he wasn’t wearing his wedding ring today? Politico now has a story on it. Politico has a story: ‘POTUS Goes Ringless at Presser.’ Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh. And I just casually threw it away. It was just a casual, throwaway little line and now Politico’s got a whole story on it: President ‘Goes Ringless at Presser.’