RUSH: All you have to do is go to the Drudge Report, look at the headlines on the Drudge Report right now to know without doubt what Barack Obama’s goals for this country are and how close he is to ruining this country as you and I know it and love it as it was founded, making as many people in this country poor as possible, obliterating what has been the defining greatness of this country through its history, the middle class.

Here the headlines: “Record 46.2 Million Below Poverty Line.” “Twenty-two Percent of American Children Live in Poverty.” “Dramatic Drop in Median Income.” “Poverty Soars,
Highest Since 1993.” They got a picture here of Obama and Michelle at the soup — that’s not Michelle. It’s Obama. It’s a low res picture I’m looking at. He’s at a soup kitchen. So here are some details, and again I would say to all of you Republicans that are gonna meet. The next debate’s on Thursday the 22nd. You Republicans might want to focus entirely on Obama that night because the optics for this guy are unbelievably bad. His policies are destroying the economy and the lives of millions of people every day right in front of our eyes. He puts himself on 9/11 in a soup kitchen as a tribute to who, to what?

The hijackers of 9/11 were not just trying to take down a couple buildings. Where were those buildings? What were those buildings called? The World Trade Center. They were targeting the US economy. So on 9/11 our president shows up at a soup kitchen in tribute to what? Okay, so we’ve had the discussion now about vaccines, and we’ve had the discussion of Social Security, Ponzi scheme. Here’s what the American people care about. They don’t have any jobs, even the Congressional Budget Office, whatever they’re worth, “CBO: Jobless Rate to Stay 9% through 2012.” The new norm. Jobless rate to stay 9% through 2012. Twenty-two percent of American children lived in poverty last year. More than one-fifth of Americans under 18 lived in poverty last year. These are Census figures, by the way.

I saw this and said, “How can this be?” The economy turned the corner. We’ve come back from the brink. Obama saved us. Obama created or saved millions of jobs. He’s redistributed the wealth. The woman in Tampa got her new kitchen, got her new house. We’re on the right track. Obama’s the world’s greatest expert on jobs, jobs, jobs. He’s focused, he won’t rest, he’s even got a bill, how can there be so many children living in poverty? “Poverty Rate Rises as Incomes Decline, Census Figures’ — Amid a still struggling economy, more people in America fell below the poverty line last year, according to new Census data released Tuesday. The nation’s poverty rate rose to 15.1% in 2010, its highest level since 1993.

“About 46.2 million people are now considered in poverty, 2.6 million more than last year. The government defines the poverty line as income of $22,314 a year for a family of four and $11,139 for an individual.” I remember in 1979 I started working for the Kansas City Royals at $12,000 a year. I’m gonna go to my inflation calculator, I’m gonna find out what $12,000 in 1979 is today. Okay, $12,000 in 1979, today that’s $37,000. So $12,000 a year in 1979’s the equivalent of $37,342 a year today. Just to put in perspective what the poverty numbers are. You’re in poverty if you’re an individual making $11,139 a year. The OMB updates the poverty line each year to account for inflation. “For middle-class families, income fell in 2010. The median household income was $49,445, down slightly from $49,777 the year before.”

And now get this. This is the last line in this story from CNNMoney.com: “The figures weren’t very surprising, given the unemployment rate remained above 9% in 2010 and the number of Americans who have been unemployed for six months or more surged to an all-time high during the year.” Well, this wasn’t unexpected? For the first time we get an economic story of utter disaster, and it wasn’t unexpected? CNNMoney.com is telling us that the poverty numbers and the plunge in median income, all this, were expected? That means tolerated? Expected? Who knew? Why did they know? Well, whoever knew could only have known if they understood what Obama’s policies have done. Now what, are they gonna blame this on Bush?

The economy turned the corner! It turned the corner! It turned the corner going back to the Great Depression, and on the way it passed Misery Avenue. That’s the corner Jimmy Carter led the nation to when he was in office. They’re headed right back there. Yep, that’s the corner we’ve turned, folks: Back to Misery Avenue, Malaise Place (which is a cul-de-sac). You just drive around in circles in there, Bloomberg’s version of the story: “US Poverty Climbs to a 17-year High in 2010.” By the way, all those people in poverty are not gonna be paying taxes or even paying into Social Security and Medicare. But they’re gonna get it. Can we call it a Ponzi scheme? However, however there’s another side to this, ladies and gentlemen.

Over at the Heritage Foundation there is a guy by the name of Robert Rector, and I have been citing Robert Rector’s work since the late eighties. He has a partner, Rachel Sheffield. Rector studies poverty, not just in the United States but around the world — and from the first days in the late eighties/early nineties when I began citing Robert Rector’s work, left-wing media watchdogs have been harping on me for making things up! What Rector and Rachel Sheffield do is learn facts about the poor. Just who are they? Just what is poverty in America? What do the poor in this country not have, and what do they have? And you’ll be surprised if you’ve not heard this before. The updated list is coming right after this.

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RUSH: “In his address to the joint session of Congress last week, President Barack Obama called for $477 billion in new federal” taxes. He says “spending,” but it’s $477 billion in
taxes “which he said would give hundreds of thousands of disadvantaged young people hope and dignity while giving their low-income parents ‘ladders out of poverty.’ And today, the U.S. Census released its annual poverty report, which declared that 46.2 million persons, or roughly one in seven Americans, were poor in 2010. What President Obama didn’t tell America as he was pleading for more spending … is what it really means to be poor in America. In a new report, Heritage’s Robert Rector and Rachel Sheffield lay out what the U.S. government’s own facts and figures really say about poverty in the United States.

“The results might surprise you, especially if your view of poverty is the conventional one, perpetuated by the media — namely, destitute conditions of homelessness and hunger. In reality, though, the living conditions of those defined as poor by the government are much different than that popular image. The following are facts about persons defined as ‘poor’ by the Census Bureau.” Are you ready? “80% of poor households have air conditioning. Nearly [75%] three-fourths have a car or truck, and 31% have two or more cars or trucks. Nearly two-thirds have cable or satellite television,” which means they have TV sets, too. “Two-thirds of people [defined as poor by the Census Bureau] have at least one DVD player and 70% have a VCR.” (interruption)

Well, what are with you gonna do, Snerdley, some places that’s all they have. It would figure. Blu-ray, I doubt the Census has even heard of Blu-ray yet. They’re just including that in DVD. Half of the people defined as poor by the Census Bureau “have a personal computer, and one in seven have two or more computers. More than half of poor families with children” defined as poor by our government “have a video game system, such as an Xbox or PlayStation.” More than half! I don’t even have an Xbox or a PlayStation! The poor have something that I don’t have. Well, more than half of the poor. “43% have Internet access. One-third” of the people our government considers poor “have a wide-screen plasma or LCD television.” (interruption)

How are you gonna watch Jerry Springer? That’s right. Or Jersey Shore or Glee. One-fourth, 25% of the people our country defines as poor have a “digital video recorder system, such as a TiVo. As for hunger and homelessness, Rector and Sheffield point to 2009 statistics from the U.S. Department of Agriculture showing that 96% of poor parents stated that their children were never hungry at any time during the year because they could not afford food, 83% of poor families reported having enough food to eat, and over the course of a year, only 4% of poor persons become temporarily homeless, with 42% of poor households actually owning their own homes.” Forty-two percent of households our government categorize as poor own their own homes. Ever heard of subprime? “The average poor American has more living space than the average Swede or German,” and there’s even more of all these facts in their report: “Understanding Poverty in the US.” This is not to say the poor have it easy, don’t misunderstand this. It’s all about how poor and poverty is categorized in this country versus anywhere else.

Now, Obama’s brother living in the shack, that’s poor.

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RUSH: By the way, what percentage of poor children in America get two free meals a day at school even in the summertime? Yeah. It’s an amazing thing, poverty in this country.

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RUSH: Now, interesting thing about this business with the poor, and I know that some of you are waiting out there, you’re probably dialing the phone trying to call in and catch me
in something you think that I haven’t caught on to, you think I’ve missed. I know that some of you, you’re waiting out there, you’re thinking I’m purposely forgetting something or purposely not mentioning it to you in order to mislead people to make my point. With most other hosts, you would be correct. It is this. We got the poor. We got all these numbers on the new poor. All these people living in poverty. Numbers are way up, and yet I just told you all the stuff the poor have.

So if we say that more poor people have been created under Obama and then we say but the poor really aren’t poor, then we have an interesting conflict there. Very, very, very carefully is how we must navigate this. I mean you can’t complain about all the poor Obama’s creating with his policies and then downplay what it is to be poor. So the way to hit this is to simply say that Obama is creating more and more people who are defined as poor in this country. The point is that Obama is creating more and more food stamp recipients, more and more unemployed, more and more homeless, and let’s be honest: Why do the poor have all of this stuff? Well, yeah, government stash, but where does the government get it?

The point is that they have it because of redistribution. Many of them do not work. We could have some fun with this because you could define poor today as simply saying somebody who is dependent on the government. And if you are dependent on the government, look at all you get and look at why you’re likely to vote Democrat. It is a problem. If somebody loses their job and their home, but their kids have two meals a day, the point is that Obama’s policies have severely harmed that family. What Obama is doing is converting middle-class families into poor families. Now, I know some of you been waiting out there, I know, I just know you’ve been waiting to call me on this, “Hey wait, Limbaugh, you can’t do this, you can’t sit there and start claiming all these poor people and all this poverty and Obama created it and then follow it up about how it isn’t so bad.” And you have a point.

The point is that as our government defines poverty, Obama and his policies are putting more and more people into it. So the question then becomes, did Obama save or create more poor people? Just as we debate did Obama save or create X numbers of jobs, how many poor people did Obama save versus how many poor people did he create? Because what’s happening in America is that Obama is turning middle-class families into poor families by destroying the economy. There aren’t enough jobs. It’s just a shame, folks, it’s depressing to see what’s happening to the country.

And again I stress, this is nothing compared to what our country’s going to look like once Obamacare begins full implementation in 2014. Being poor today simply means being dependent on the government, which is exactly what Obama and the Democrat Party want. The more dependent people are on the government, the more dependent they are on the Democrat Party. That’s the theory. The way it shapes up here, only the very rich and the very poor can afford to be Democrat.