RUSH: Obama in Kansas City today with yet another speech on the economy. I’m told by a spy, I have a spy in Kansas City who said this speech was listless, it didn’t have a lot of focus, not a lot of energy, just didn’t seem to cut it. So I’m going to play these two sound bites to see if my spy reports accurately to me. Here’s the first two of.
OBAMA: Ultimately government doesn’t create all the jobs. Government can’t guarantee growth by itself. But what government can do is lay the foundation for small businesses to expand and to thrive, for entrepreneurs to open up shop and test out new products, for workers to get the training that they need and for families to achieve some measure of economic security. And that role is especially important in tough economic times, and that’s why when my administration began, we immediately cut taxes. That’s right. You wouldn’t know it from listening to folks, but we cut taxes for working families and for small business owners all across America to help them.
RUSH: I have to say, he doesn’t sound too interested in this. My spy is accurate. This gives me comfort, by the way. You always want to know if your reporters are giving you the straight skinny on something. He doesn’t sound excited. I mean listen to this. He’s always defending government when he goes out and talks about the economy, have you noticed that? Always defends government. What government can do is lay the foundation for small business to expand, to thrive. What do you know about any of that? Obama doesn’t know anything about that. He has urged people not even to do that. This is Obama, recently, Arizona State University.
OBAMA: Do you study business? Why not help a struggling not-for-profit find better, more effective ways to serve folks in need? You study nursing? Understaffed clinics and hospitals across this country are desperate for your help. You study education? Teach in a high-need school. Give a chance to kids who can’t get everything they need, maybe, in their neighborhood, maybe not even in their home, but we can’t afford to give up on them. Prepare them to compete for any job anywhere in the world. You study engineering? Help us lead a green revolution, developing new sources of clean energy that will power our economy and preserve our planet. Find somebody to be successful for. Raise their hopes, rise to their needs.
RUSH: Find somebody to be successful for? Find somebody to be successful for. Raise their hopes, study socialism, run for president of the United States. What’s the real message here? Anyway, that’s Obama. He doesn’t know anything about the private sector. And when he’s being honest, he’s out there telling people not to mess with it. Don’t find a job in the private sector. Here’s another sound bite. What ego does — (laughing) — calm down in there. Snerdley is blowing a gasket. What ego does he have to tell people what to do with their lives? What’s he ever done? He’s trying to be inspirational. What he’s trying to do, Snerdley, is steer people in to dead-end stuff. He’s trying to steer them into government jobs. He’s trying to steer them into jobs of no identity whatsoever. Really, it’s not ego, it’s a diabolical scheme and it’s his way of trying to be inspiring. Here’s the next bite of Obama in Kansas City. I wonder who he thinks is responsible for the problems that we have?
OBAMA: There are some people who argue that we should abandon some of these efforts. Some people who make a political calculation that it’s better to say ‘no’ to everything than to lend a hand to clean up the mess that we’ve been in. I mean this has been a difficult time for America right now. Two years of brutal recession, a decade of economic insecurity —
RUSH: Decade?
OBAMA: — and there are going to be some hard days ahead. That’s the truth. It’s going to take a while for us to dig ourselves out of this hole.
RUSH: It’s going to take us a while to plug the hole, and it’s gonna take a while to secure the border. We’re not even going to try to do that. I thought we turned the corner. I thought we’re back from the brink. I thought we’re on a roll now. You know, this guy, he’s making a speech here, he didn’t even tout — and these new employment numbers are bogus anyway — but he didn’t even bother to tout them, at least not in the two bites we had. Difficult time for America. Decade of economic insecurity? What decade is he talking about? Is he talking about the last ten years? Maybe if he wants to talk about the last year and a half, economic insecurity ever since he was elected. My spy, by the way, in Kansas City, has a sad observation. He was walking around Kansas City today, and he said, ‘Times are really tough here. I saw a blind prostitute working the streets. You really have to hand it to her.’ I hadn’t considered that. Really, really tough times. A blind prostitute working the streets on the day Obama’s in to tout the economy in Kansas City.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: All right, so Obama is out there talking about a ‘decade of economic uncertainty.’ I looked it up. A decade ago, in July of 2000, the unemployment rate was 4%. This is before 9/11, granted. The unemployment rate was 4% in July of 2000. As recently as April of 2008, US unemployment was 5% — and that used to be what we were told was as statistically low as it could ever go: 4.7 to 5%. We had an amazing recovery after 9/11, thanks to the Bush tax cuts. What decade of economic uncertainty is he talking about? Here’s Leanne in Rockwood, Tennessee. Thank you for waiting and welcome to the Rush Limbaugh program.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. Thank you for taking my call.
RUSH: You bet!
CALLER: What I wanted to talk about was what you went over at the top of the hour: The ever-increasing wave of people who are abandoning Obama, and I have some liberal friends that have gone completely full circle. I mean, I was the one that was sending things about Obama — anything that could be substantiated, anything that can find corroborated, words out of his mouth pictures, whatever. Now they’re sending me what I would call paranoia conspiracy theories, like a nine and a half minute thing off YouTube about Obama that I wouldn’t even send, and she — well, this is a girl in particular — is telling me that she is now thinking that she says more and more, ‘I’m inclined to think the world will end in 2012.’ (exhasperated sigh)
RUSH: Uhhh…
CALLER: I’m like, ‘I don’t know about the world ending, but Mr. Obama is surely endeavoring to end the American way of life.’
RUSH: Well, look, there’s polling data to back up what your anecdotal stories indicate. I forget what polling company it is. Is it a Fox poll? Maybe it’s Gallup today. Twenty-one percent of the people are angry. You know, in all the approve-disapproval numbers with Bush, I never saw a category of ‘angry.’ You’ve got his approval numbers around 40, disapproval numbers around 30 or 42, something like that. People are unhappy with the future of the country is the number, and ‘angry about it’ are 21%. I also saw that the only two demographics where Obama has majority support when it comes to job approval are Democrats at 81% and the black community at 150% support. Other than that, everybody is below 50% in approval or support for Obama.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Charlotte, North Carolina, Scott, thank you for calling. You are on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Rush, it is an honor to speak with you, my friend.
RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much.
CALLER: I just want to let you know: I’m a business owner. I’m 40 years old. I’ve been in business for over 15 years, and I am scared to death to spend any money. What’s coming on January 1st when the Bush tax cuts inspire, there’s no way to prepare for that. Another example: My wife and I want to do some work in our house, we have the money to do it, but we’re afraid to spend it. Another point: He just talked about — what did Obama say? — ten years of negative economy? That’s ridiculous. The best years of growth in my business were due to George Bush and his tax cuts, period. I had two trucks when George Bush started office. Now I’ve got ten, and it’s because he made it advantageous for me to grow my business —
RUSH: I know.
CALLER: — and to hire more people.
RUSH: It’s just another one of these straw men. It’s another lie. Decade of economic uncertainty? You know, you talk about the coming tax increases and your lack of confidence to spend money to improve the house or grow your business. What about the 2,000 pages of financial reform which nobody has the slightest clue what’s in there except — except, guess what? — there are gender and race quotas imposed on hiring in the financial sector. It has been discovered, it has been learned. Whatever is in there, it will not be good for small business people like you.
CALLER: Well, that’s what I keep hearing, how he’s done this stuff for small business. I can promise you, without a doubt — and you know, I didn’t go to Harvard, but without a doubt, he is not helping me. And honestly, Rush, and I don’t like to say this, no matter what they try and do to keep me down, I’m going to survive. I’m going to do better. They can do whatever they want to do to try and tax me, to try and put me down, to try and make me Walk the Line. It’s not going to happen, because I’m going to be bigger and badder than ever. I’m not afraid of him or this administration. I’m gonna keep plugging along and keep working hard, because this is America, and that’s what I’m supposed to do, and that’s what I was raised to do.
RUSH: Exactly right. This is what people who have a statistic, zero-sum game view of the economy see. They see, ‘Okay, you’ll just give up. Your taxes are going up so high, you’ll just accept it. You’ll just stop working. You’ll just accept it.’
CALLER: Not going to happen. I’m going to work harder.
RUSH: The entrepreneurs and the people who make this country work are not gonna sit there and just take it. They never do. They will find ways around it. They will work harder than ever just as you’ve described you’re going to do. It’s a dirty, rotten shame that you have to do it. It’s not that a president can actually help you, but this guy can certainly put obstacles in your way in his role as president and chief steward of the government. That’s the number one obstacle you face in growing your business is government regulation and the effort to penalize people like you in the private sector by taxing you and redistributing what you’ve earned to other people who are not working.
CALLER: This is true. Rush, my friend, I appreciate everything you do. Keep up the good work.
RUSH: Thank you very much. That’s Scott in Charlotte, North Carolina, who is buttressing the point that there was no ‘decade of economic uncertainty’ during the Bush years.