RUSH: I want to lead off with this. I was watching Fox, Bret Baier’s show, Special Report with Bret Baier, and I was channel surfing, going back and forth between the NFL Network and ESPN. I was getting stoked up on the Monday night game between the Fort’iners and the New Orleans Saints. Reggie Bush, by the way, broken fibula, broken bone, out five, six weeks, that’s the latest.
At any rate, it was 20 ’til seven and that’s when the all stars begin, the pundits. I clicked over to Fox and there was Judith Miller. Judith Miller, formerly of the New York Times, now a pundit and an analyst at the Fox News Channel, and she was praising Obama’s appearance yesterday. She was praising it. I mean over-the-top praising him. He was really good. He had a really good message. I mean if people are going to pay attention, this is a winning message for the Democrats, and do you know what the essence of it was is that the economy right now is totally George Bush’s fault because Obama inherited two wars that were not paid for and two tax cuts that were not paid for. And she said that he succeeded in making it crystal clear to the audience, anybody watching his little town hall meeting yesterday that inheriting two unfunded wars and two unfunded tax cuts fully explains the economic morass we’re in and it took ten years to build us to this mess and it’s going to take us a long time — she was over the top effusive in her praise.
Now, Krauthammer was a little disbelieving and Steve Hayes was disbelieving. But I remember that we had talked about that whole concept, unfunded tax cuts, unfunded wars, and this has become a template now. It’s a narrative that the media has tried to pick up, and to suggest — (interruption) Yes, it still does. I don’t care how much I know, it still does strike me strange to consider the media a bunch of activists. I mean we all grow up thinking that they’re impartial arbiters, just people writing down what happened and telling us. But it still is a stunning realization every day that they are part of the opposition. We call ’em media, but they’re not media. They’re not media. They’re propagandists, partisan political operatives, part of the Democrat political complex. We still call ’em the media, which is a gross mischaracterization of who these people are.
Anyway, here she’s going on and on and on about what a great thing Obama did, laid it out real well for everybody to understand. Bob Herbert’s got a column in the New York Times today and said if Obama doesn’t start talking to black people he’s gonna lose the black vote. He’s going to have to start addressing black people on their issues and issues of their concern. I’m thinking, wait a minute. I thought he was going to be postracial? So here you have Bob Herbert at the New York Times and a lot of other Democrats, Richard Cohen urging Obama to go racial. I don’t know what issues are different but apparently in Herbert’s mind black people face a whole different slew of things than other people in America. (interruption) Well, jobs, unemployment, housing prices, I don’t know. But he’s got to speak to them. He cannot treat them as just part of the American population if he’s gonna turn out their votes. He’s gotta address them as the separate entity and voting bloc that they are. And yet with all this, here’s Judith Miller praising the explanation Obama gave for the economic morass that we face today. Two unpaid-for wars and two unpaid-for tax cuts.
So the truth is not a relevant thing here. Judith Miller was simply commenting on, ‘That’s pervasive.’ If he can make a lot of people believe that then he’ll get himself some approval numbers back, and he’ll encourage some more vote turnout support for Democrats by continuing to blame all this on Bush. Now, you and I, if you watched it, you’re probably as incredulous as I am watching it, but understand what Clinton said in an era where facts don’t matter, and that really is true on the Democrat side, she was doing nothing other than suggesting a way of persuading people. Now, let’s examine again this whole notion that tax cuts were not paid for. Even Chris Matthews last night on his show — this is so monumental I wonder if we’ve got the sound bite on the roster. Matthews even admonished the president, ‘Please, would you stop talking about tax cuts as the government giving people money. It’s the people’s money in the first place, and a tax cut allows them to keep it.’ He said it right. He was actually admonishing the president in his lingo about tax cuts.
So tax cuts not paid for. This has always been a thorn in my side, this whole line of thinking that tax cuts are not paid for, because it rests on the notion that government shall never do with less. Government must always increase its revenue, no matter what. It can’t do with less, and it’s axiomatic in their world, in their static little world that a tax cut costs the government money when it’s not true. Tax cuts increase revenue to the Treasury. Revenue to the Treasury is not what the Democrats are about anyway. They would be for tax cuts if they were. But the whole notion you don’t pay for tax cuts. The reason for tax cuts is to generate wealth creation. Tax cuts are intended to leave money in the possession of the individual who earned it. Tax cuts are about private property rights. There’s not one thing tax cuts have to do with government other than the fact that they end up increasing revenue.
This whole notion that we’re in this economic mess because we had two tax cuts unpaid for, those two tax cuts of Bush’s led to increased revenue, capital gains particularly. And then they said we had two wars that were not paid for. Well, Medicare is not paid for, Medicaid is not paid for, Social Security is not paid for, the Department of Education is not paid for, FEMA is not paid for, the EPA is not paid for, the Fish and Wildlife Service is not paid for, nothing is paid for. We are overdrawn. We are in debt. Nothing is paid for. So why single out the Pentagon, two unpaid-for wars, why do you single out the Pentagon when the deficit is government-wide, and why blame individuals? Individuals are the sole reason the government has any money in the first place, yet unpaid-for tax cuts? We are in this mess because of out-of-control spending, and that’s why there is a Tea Party. We’re in this mess because of out-of-control regulations, and none of that has been paid for, either.
Not one dime of Obama’s stimulus, not one dime of TARP, none of it has been paid for. And yet he focuses and the Democrats focus on tax cuts and two wars, one of which they supported, by the way, Afghanistan. The other one they tried to lose, Iraq. Nothing’s paid for, yet Judith Miller thinks it was brilliantly persuasive for Obama — I mean these people live in an alternative universe, in a different world. And because nothing is paid for and because all of this spending is going to have to be eventually paid for in part by future generations is why there is a Tea Party movement. It is why citizens are rising up. It is why people are abandoning Obama. How you can look at that town hall meeting yesterday and suggest that Obama cleaned up or that he had anything brilliant to say? The best they can say about it is that he didn’t lose his cool. The best they can say about it is that he kept his cool, he kept his attitude when his own voters were telling him how tough it is and asking him, ‘Is this my new reality, is this it?’ These are people who voted for him, and they’re trying to find any morsel of evidence that Obama hit a home run yesterday or even a base hit.
The Democrat Party, the media, whoever, Obama, delusional about what’s going on around him. If he’s not delusional, if it indeed is on purpose, take your pick, neither one is any good, neither one is rewarding or comforting. It’s absurd to continue to listen to this and it’s like they think that you haven’t figured them out. They act as though every page in their playbook they’re gonna get away with like they got away with it 10 years ago, 15 years ago, 20 years ago: the class envy, tax cuts for the rich and so forth. All around them their world is crumbling, their political world is crumbling. Now, they’ve had great success in implementing a whole bunch of destructive policies in a year and a half because they’ve had these supermajorities in both the House and the Senate. But in terms of the support of the American people, it’s crumbling, they don’t have it. They’re losing it in droves left and right. It’s breathtaking to behold all this. We’re on the cusp here of a true new reformation, a new, real period of reform, a real new beginning, not just words. It’s sitting there on a silver platter and still there are some Republicans that don’t get it.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Now, listen to this: Unfunded wars and two unpaid-for tax cuts are the reason we have an economic crisis today. What a fraud that argument is! Let’s say he even really believes it. Is the solution to start spending like crazy like he’s been doing? If we already have two tax cuts not paid for, if we already have two wars not paid for, then why the hell keep spending? Which is what he did! It just struck me. Everything about this administration is an utter fraud. Here is the brilliant Judith Miller last night on Fox Special Report.
MILLER: I think he just doesn’t want to get in the way of the Republican Party as it commits suicide. (guffawing) If you have a line, and the line is, ‘It’s been a decade that it took us to get into this mess — two unfunded wars, two unfunded tax cuts — I have started to move things, turn them around,’ I thought today especially was very, very effective. Because even though he was on the defensive, he was relaxed, and he also made excellent points about the need to invest in infrastructure —
RUSH: What?
MILLER: He talked about the middle class, he said, ‘I’m not anti-Wall Street,’ which he needed to do, because coming from New York, up there (guffawing), we think he’s anti-Wall Street.
RUSH: Crying out loud! They say Sarah Palin and Christine O’Donnell are stupid? My God, this woman’s IQ you could fit in a thimble. He was effective? His own supporters… Even Jake Tapper said it was striking. This woman shoulda never gotten out of jail.
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RUSH: Judith Miller. Remember, now, Judith Miller used to work at the New York Times. Judith Miller is what passes for a conservative at the New York Times. She’s not there anymore. She went to jail because she wouldn’t tell Fitzpatrick, the special prosecutor, what everybody knew: It was Richard Armitage talking to her and everybody else, about Valerie Plame and the CIA. I don’t know that for a fact here, but she went to jail to protect the source. It had to be Armitage.
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RUSH: Here’s the Matthews quote, by the way, folks, that I was referencing earlier in the program from last night on Hardball.
MATTHEWS: He should stop saying that giving people tax cuts is giving people money. It’s their money. A tax cut is when the government doesn’t take our money. It’s an important distinction. He talked today, for example, about people getting a check from the government in the form of a tax cut. That’s not the way it works. If tax rates are kept lower it’s a matter of the check going to the government being smaller. Again, it’s an important distinction.
RUSH: This is Matthews in a comment section of his program warning Obama: You got this tax cut business wrong. Obama, in his town hall meeting yesterday, said that tax cuts for the rich, why, that would be writing them a check for a hundred thousand dollars. And Matthews said, oh, you can’t do it that way; that’s not what happened. Of course Matthews is exactly right.