RUSH: I mentioned moments ago on this program that Barack Obama had made a statement that sets the bar so low for what he thinks is middle-class success, happiness, and achievement in this country. I’ve got the actual sound bite. I want you to listen to this. This is Barack Obama, January 25th in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, at Conveyor Engineering & Manufacturing company. Just a brief portion of what he said.
OBAMA: If you’re willing to put in the work, the idea is that you should be able to raise a family and own a home, not go bankrupt because you got sick, ’cause you’ve got some health insurance that helps you deal with those difficult times; that you can send your kids to college; that you can put some money away for retirement. That’s all most people want. Folks don’t have unrealistic ambitions. They do believe that, if they work hard, they should be able to achieve that small measure of an American dream.
RUSH: They don’t have unrealistic ambitions. Most people don’t want much. They don’t have any unrealistic ambitions. They believe if they work hard they ought to be able to achieve that small measure of the American dream. That’s not all of what anybody wants. He’s describing his own serfs. He’s describing people who live on that kind of stuff that he gives them. The fact of the matter is that there are people in the middle class, remember, we had this amazing story in the New York Times last week. People stuck in the middle class in the safety net. They are taking government assistance and they’re embarrassed and they don’t like it and some of them have said with all the obstacles in our way, they don’t think they can work hard enough to get out of it.
But to say that people do not have unrealistic ambitions. If you’re willing to put in the work, the idea is you should able to raise a family, own a home, and not go bankrupt because you get sick. What the hell? This constant portrayal of health care as something that can cause you financial meltdown. To how many people does that actually happen? The percentage is so small you couldn’t calculate it. But to Barack Obama getting sick can destroy you. So you gotta have Obamacare. You give up your ambition. You give up your desire to make something of your life in exchange for the security of not going bankrupt if you get sick.
This is appalling. Yeah, got some health insurance, helps you deal with those difficult times. Yeah, getting sick is the greatest financial threat known to every American, right? Getting sick is the greatest financial risk in America? That’s what he wants you to believe? Yeah, just want to be able to send your kids to college, put some money away for retirement. That’s all most people want. They don’t have unrealistic ambitions. They believe if they work hard they ought to be able to achieve that small measure. Man, what a limited view of potential freedom and possibility in America. Who in the world would want to follow this guy anywhere?
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Barack Hussein Obama, defining the American dream down. Let me tell you what Barack Obama really believes, folks. Obama believes that, if folks work hard and become successful, they should be punished with higher taxes and the loss of all their deductions. That’s what happens to you in Barack Obama’s America. So you better keep your limitations in sight.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I’m not through with this Obama business, folks. This sound bite that we just played, I’ll play it again here from January 25th in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. It is profound. It’s the President of the United States purposely destroying hope. Mr. Hope and Change tells the American people, the American middle class (paraphrased), “Hey, no reason to shoot high. We know we don’t want to shoot high anymore. We know what it’s gonna take to satisfy you.” Here, listen to this again.
(Replaying of sound bite)
RUSH: Stop this from a second. What a picture of life in the United States painted by this guy. What a desolate picture. What a cloudy, gray, raw, overcast October day this guy presents us. “You’re willing to put in the work. The idea is you ought to be able to raise a family and own a home, not go bankrupt ’cause you get sick.” And I ask again: Who the hell does? How often does it happen that people go bankrupt from getting sick in this country? I’m sorry, this offends me. We have the best health care system the world has ever seen. It does not drive everybody into bankruptcy. No, but he wants you to think it will! He wants you so afraid of getting sick, so afraid of having to go to the hospital!
It could be the end of your financial life, bankruptcy! That’s why you’ve gotta support Obamacare. That’s why you gotta turn your life over to him, to make sure those big, bad wolves out there who all want to kill you don’t get away with it! Obama will save you. And you’ll have your little 1800-square-foot house, your 2.8 kids, a white picket fence, a dog, a couple of electric cars — 48,000 hour charge the damn thing so it’s able to drive 40 miles. They really want you on a mass transit, stupid little bus going to your mass job where you’re nothing but a number. You don’t exist as a human being anymore. You fill in the blank for whatever the regime needs you to do and you are either called a “good worker” or a “bad worker.”
And that’s all you want.
You just don’t want any more than that.
You want to be able to send your kids away to college without going bankrupt. You ought to be able to put some money away for retirement without going bankrupt. That’s all most people want. We don’t have unrealistic ambitions. So give up your hope and give up your desire for the American dream and give up your dream period, and give up your desire to make it big. Give up your ambition! It’s outsized anyway. You have no business dreaming that big. Who do you think you are? So “hope” equals a nine-to-five job. You get home on some form of mass transit. When you have to go to the grocery store, you get in your little electric car or whatever. Your house looks like everybody else’s house. It’s where everybody else’s house happens to be.
And, if you do this the way Obama says, he promises you won’t go bankrupt when you get sick. Or you won’t go bankrupt when you send your kids to college. But why send your kids to college when this is all you get for it? What kind of hope is this? What kind of change is this? What kind of ambition is this? From a guy who hasn’t accomplished jack-you-know-what in his life. In the real world where you get up and go to work, this guy doesn’t have a resume. (interruption) Well, yeah, if you think everybody’s poor, oppressed and downtrodden and every corporation’s out to kill you. Then, yeah, I guess this dream looks pretty good.
But sorry, we are not … take your pick of a Third World country. We’re not all Obama’s brother living in a six-by-nine-foot hut! Now, this view that Obama just painted would probably look pretty good to Obango Oyango Hussein Obama, whatever his name is. But this is why the election is gonna be about Barack Obama. Because it’s going to be about the future of the country: Economic liberty, religious liberty, speech liberty. All of it’s under assault from this guy and his party. He’s not alone in this! It’s all people want. We don’t have unrealistic ambitions — and if you do? If you have unrealistic ambitions, if you want more than your 1,200-square-foot little house and if you want more than your 2.8 kids and if you want more than your wife who goes to work and bosses you around every day — if you want more than that — then, by golly, Jesus tells me to raise your taxes!
If your dreams get too big, I’m gonna do what Jesus told me to do and tax the ever living hell out of you! I’m gonna punish you for having visions that go way outside what your normal ambitions ought to be. Forty acres and a mule. That’s what Obama’s promising us. Folks don’t have unrealistic ambitions. They believe if they work hard they ought to be able to achieve a small measure of the American dream. “Mr. Limbaugh, you know very well this is not what the president means!” What does he mean, Mr. New Castrati? “He simply means, Mr. Limbaugh, the small measure of the American dream, at the very least this is what people should be able to keep by working! At the very least that’s what…” No, no, Mr. New Castrati. It sounds good. That’s all he envisions for people. Looks at economic policies! You end up acquiring more than that, and you are the enemy! You get punished! He’s gonna tax that achievement right out of your back pocket and right out of your bank account. There won’t be any achievement left.
We move on. What’s the next bite? Oh, this was Obama this morning in Washington at the White House speaking about the importance of the agreement passed by Congress to extend the payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance. Here’s what he said…
OBAMA: Whenever Congress refuses to act, Joe and I, we’re gonna act. In the months to come, wherever we have an opportunity, we’re gonna take steps on our own to keep this economy moving. Because we’ve got a choice right now. We can either settle for a country where a few people are doing very well and everybody else is having to just struggle to get by, or we can build an economy where everybody gets a fair shot and everybody’s doing their fair share, and everybody is taking responsibility. And everybody’s playing by the same set of rules. And that’s the economy that I want.
RUSH: Yeah, in a few months, pal, what you want isn’t gonna matter. That’s the economy you want? Who are you? That’s the economy you want? Where everybody’s equal? And you get to define equal? Don’t forget what I told you yesterday, quoting Tocqueville. Americans in the early 1800s fought the perils of equality, not the perils of inequality. They fought the perils of equality. They knew policies like those proscribed by Obama would end the country as it was founded. And how about this picture that he paints of America: We can settle for a country where a few people are doing very well and everybody else is — That’s not this country. It’s not just a few people who do very well in this country. It is loads and loads of them who traditionally have done well in this country. And, in many cases, speaking bluntly, the people that don’t do well have only themselves to blame, and those who have no control over themselves are the ones we help.
I don’t care what kind of trouble I’m in. I’ve been doing this for 23 years. They can’t get me in any more trouble than they tried to put me in now. What am I in trouble for now? I’m telling you, this country, with the opportunity that is present in this country every day, that is unlimited, the only limits in this country on anybody’s advancement is their own limitation that they place on themselves. The greatest obstacles that people face are those put in place by themselves, until this guy came along. Until the Democrat Party achieved prominence. But, even now, we are not a country where just a very few are doing well and everybody else is just struggling and barely getting by. The people that are just struggling and barely getting by are the people that trusted him, the people that voted for him. The people sat around and waited for him to give them a new car, a new kitchen, a new house, a new yard, a new lawnmower, whatever. Well, they’re gonna be sitting around waiting for the rest of their lives to get it because he doesn’t have the power to give it to ’em.
For him to sit here and redefine the American dream into such an ordinary slipshod mediocre type existence offends me as much as anything this man has ever said. And he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. His portrayal of this country is nowhere near accurate. Past, present, or future. He hasn’t the slightest idea. A guy dripping with resentment for this country is now in charge it. (imitating Obama) “That’s the economy I want and Joe, Joe and I, we’re gonna get the economy we want.” We better pray they don’t, folks.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Yeah. Tell me something, folks. How is it playing by the rules? How is everybody playing by the rules when half of us don’t even pay income taxes? How is that playing by the rules? And how does this guy have the nerve to give this poor man’s American dream speech while Moochelle and the daughters are in Aspen staying with some billionaire supporter in a luxury ski resort on their 16th vacation in the last three years? He has the audacity and the nerve to paint a picture of a future that is bleak and colorless while his wife and daughters are staying with some billionaire in Aspen skiing on their 16th vacation in three years. Soft despotism. Soft tyranny. And he wants you to applaud what he is doing and how he’s doing it.
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