RUSH: They are taking us for fools, folks, with all of this. They’re insulting our intelligence. But you and I are not fools in any way, shape, manner, or form. If the labor force participation rate had just stayed steady all year, the unemployment rate would be 8.4% today versus 8.3% in January, if the labor force participation rate had stayed steady all year. Meaning, every month or two the administration is just lopping off jobs from the jobs universe.

I’m talking about two things here. I’m not talking about just people stopping looking for work or people not finding work. I’m talking about in your town, if there are businesses with a total of a hundred thousand jobs, the administration is deciding that today there are only 80,000 jobs available in your town. They’re guessing. All of this is guesswork. Some of it’s estimated. The household number is pure guesswork. They make telephone calls to people. The household number, this 800 some-odd thousand number, never gets reported other than when Democrats are in the White House. They’re just arbitrarily shrinking the labor force, and they’re doing it on the basis of a slowing economy.

You don’t do that in a growing economy. You expand the number of jobs, and then you fill them, and that equals economic growth. What they are doing as they insult our intelligence to get their unemployment number at a more favorable rate is actually shrinking, by virtue of their statistics, the number of available jobs in this country.

Now, what is this? BLS. Well, shazam. Why, this is today: US manufacturing has lost 38,000 jobs the last two months alone. “US Manufacturing Has Lost 38,000 Jobs in the Last Two Months — Manufacturing, one of the bright spots that Mr. Obama has showcased throughout the re-election campaign, fell 16,000 jobs after losing a revised 22,000 in August.” This is the regime reporting this today. Everywhere you look — what is this, the Warren Act, the administration telling Lockheed, withhold your layoff notices until after the election. This has to do with sequestration and what’s gonna happen. The budget deal, the expending the debt limit, the last negotiations if they didn’t agree to it and if they didn’t get it done, then automatic military cuts and automatic entitlement cuts. Well that’s gonna happen, and therefore the cuts will be in employment in defense contracting industries.

So a number of defense contractors, because of this, are automatically going to have to lay people off because of the federal budget cuts that are coming, and the regime has asked Lockheed to delay the layoff notices until after the election so that those people won’t get mad and blame it on Obama. And, by the way, when the administration comes and asks you to do something and you’re a defense contractor, it’s not really a request. They show up with a chainsaw, and they ask you how you like being a defense contractor. So if the regime shows up and tells you they need some assistance here on delaying layoffs…

All of that aside, we’re laying people off. People are losing their jobs, and they’re trying to tell us that the unemployment rate dropped a half percent. By the way, I watched CNN today. I watched their brilliant economic reporter Ali “Selfish” or whatever his name is, and this guy was saying, (paraphrasing) “No, it’s true, in previous months the rate went down because the administration was actually killing jobs. This 114,000, this today is real. These are real jobs that have been really created by real people. This is not the same it has been the past few months.” Okay, so these 114,000 are genuine today, except that they’re not. But I’ll tell you, folks, I’m blue in the face.

I’ve been saying the same thing since December of last year, since earlier than December. December is just as far back as I decided to go. I’ve linked to it at RushLimbaugh.com.

(interruption)

Why do I think that people don’t get it? Snerdley is asking, “Why do you think people aren’t listening to you?” Oh, I know all of you get it. But I’m thinking of “Obama phone!” in Cleveland, and I’m thinking she doesn’t get it. And I’m looking at these dorks sitting behind Obama today in Fairfax applauding. I’m sorry, folks. I’m to the point where I don’t think this guy ought to be getting one vote. I’m to the point where everybody in this country — look, I know political realities. I know party loyalty. I know dependence. I know the welfare state. I’m telling you, in my world, this guy doesn’t get one vote in a country that respects itself. Not one. Not one lie is believed.

I don’t know that everybody’s believing it. In fact, there is some encouraging polling news out there today. Big time polling news. And, look, there’s other stuff, too. We have a sound bite coming up proving a point that I said yesterday. You know, the Drive-Bys are running around, “Why didn’t Obama hit Romney with the 47%?” Somebody here in the sound bite admits that’s only for an ad. They don’t intend to throw that out for an answer. Of course, what did Romney do? He went on TV last night and disavowed it. “I was wrong.” Oh, no. I told ’em how to deal with it yesterday, the day before. Yes, I’m ticked off. I’m just ticked off at a whole bunch of stuff. I figured if everybody around me is gonna be negative I’m gonna go ahead and be negative, too. It seems like it’s the easiest way to get along with people.

Ten-point-seven percent unemployment rate if the labor force participation rate was what it was when Obama took office, 10.7. The U-6. That’s the real number. That counts everybody that doesn’t have a job, including if they’re looking or if they’ve stopped looking, and that is 14.7%. Full employment is nowhere on the horizon. You can look as far as the eye can see and at this rate there is no concept of full employment. At the rate of job creation that’s happening right now, and this highly heralded 114,000 jobs — and again I remind you, in July it was 163,000, 114,000 jobs created last month at that rate. It’ll take three more years to make up for the job losses in the recession alone, which ended in 2009. Remember that, too, the recession ended in 2009, according to the regime, in the summer of 2000.

So three years just to make up what we lost. The bottom line is, there’s no growth. Manufacturing orders dropped 5.2% in August. Manufacturing orders. This is factories and so forth where people in the middle class work. This is news from yesterday. The day before the unemployment rate drops — what was it, 8.3 or 8.2? What was it yesterday? It was 8.2 and now it’s 7.8, so down .4. Not quite half a point.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Our old buddy Jim Pethokoukis over at the American Enterprise Institute, has just posted what he refers to as an “eye-opening note from economists John Ryding and Conrad DeQuadros of RDQ Economics.”

I’m assuming that Ryding and DeQuadros is the RDQ. So it’s a firm named after these guys who own it (but not for long in this economy). Their point is: “Such a rapid decline in the unemployment rate would be consistent with 4%-5% real economic growth…” For job growth the way we’re used to it — actual new people finding new jobs — we would need an economy growing at a rate of 4.5%, 5%. And we don’t have that. We have an economy growing at 1.3%, if that.

Now, what it seems this is all intended to do, folks, is create a false positive impression. And it plays right into Obama’s narrative that he just needs more time. “We can’t change horses in the middle of the stream! It’s just now starting to work. It took a little longer than we thought, but it’s just now starting to work. Why, look, we’re at 7.8% unemployment.”

Really? What policies are working? Obamacare? All these massive regulations? What is it that’s causing this job creation? What policies? What reduction in policies? What reduction in regulations? What is Obama doing that’s causing this job growth? The stimulus bill that was spent years ago? Is it the massive debt? What’s he doing? He doesn’t have any policies. He won’t tell anybody what the next four years are gonna be.

All he’s doing is running around saying (impression), “We can’t go back to what got us in this situation! We can’t go back to what created the crisis. I’m not gonna stand for it. It ain’t gonna happen on my watch. Nope. No way.” And these mental midgets sitting there behind him going (clapping), “Yeeeeah, right on.” So I want to know what the policies are. I want to know what’s happening out there that caused this to happen.

Other than the fact that The Messiah is sitting there taking up space in a chair in the Oval Office. Oh, sorry. He’s never there anymore! He’s out on the campaign trail. He doesn’t have any pro-growth policies. Obama doesn’t want pro-growth of anything other than government. So he needs more time to do what? Raise taxes, unleash more regulations, more debt? Do what? “I need more time. It’s just now starting to work.”

Oh, and all that’s gonna create more private sector jobs? By the way, do you know why the media goes along with Obama and don’t press him on issues, don’t ask him to do press conferences, don’t demand press conferences, don’t hound him? They want him out here making these claims, and then they simply amplify them. He makes the claims; they repeat them. They don’t question anything he says. They don’t care that he doesn’t do press conferences.

He can sure embarrass ’em when he doesn’t show up for the debate, but give ’em a day and all is forgiven. Oh, do you know what the latest excuse for the debate is now? Romney was telling so many lies that Obama couldn’t keep up. His brain locked up trying to keep up with all Romney’s lies. Romney said many lies that Obama couldn’t remember ’em all and Obama had brain gas. He locked up because he was so stymied by all the lies that Romney was telling.

He had a 90-minute brain gas, exactly right.

That’s the latest excuse for Obama. Romney was telling so many lies, that poor old Obama just lost track and didn’t know which one to attack first. As such, he couldn’t attack any of them, ’cause he was in shock. Okay, let me grab a quick phone call. John in Indianapolis. It’s Open Line Friday, and you are up first. That’s a big job because the first caller sets the tone for the rest of the day.

CALLER: Well, Rush, I don’t think you should be that tweaked or mad at yourself. You gotta believe in us out here in the field. You know, we Americans out here, we’re not stupid people, and I think we understand the spin.

RUSH: I know, and I’m sick and tired of you being treated like you are stupid.

CALLER: Well —

RUSH: I’m sick and tired of you being insulted and my intelligence being insulted. I’m sick and tired of it. I know you’re not fooled by this.

CALLER: We understand the AA-rating president. We understand the gas prices. We understand the drilling moratoriums. We understand the food prices. And I think if Obama’s gonna continue to do fundraisers on this private jet which costs $80,000 an hour to operate, he should talk in that voice that he used in that video I saw from, what was it, 2007 from here on out.

RUSH: What voice?

CALLER: You know, the southern voice. The, uh…

RUSH: Oh, the southern voice.

CALLER: Yeah, that one.

RUSH: The southern voice.

CALLER: The one that Hillary Clinton kinda used. I think he should present himself in that fashion to “we the people” out here.

RUSH: Well, I don’t know. I know this makes no sense, folks, and I shouldn’t let this bother me. Some days I can’t help it. I see an Obama rally, and if I see ten people applauding, I get so mad that I can’t see straight. I start wondering, “Who are these people? How dumb must they be? How can our country survive these people? We can survive Obama, but we can’t survive the people that would vote for him.” I don’t know. See, I know intellectually why. People are just gonna vote for a Democrat because he’s a Democrat. I understand that. It’s vice-versa for Republicans and so forth.

Anyway, I gotta take a break here my friends. I’ll try to get past my seething rage here for the next two hours and change course.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Okay, here’s Sue in Cincinnati, and again, I appreciate your patience. Hello.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. Pleasure to talk to you. Thank you for taking my call.

RUSH: You bet! My pleasure.

CALLER: And again just for being our voice and giving voice to our passions. My point is: During the RNC convention I couldn’t help noticing how many states with Republican governors were touting their dropping unemployment numbers, and I had the thought then that, “Boy, if the national average does begin to drop before the election, who’s gonna get the credit but Obama?” But the credit really belongs to the states that are putting in good policies because of their governors.

RUSH: Yeah, but these guys today didn’t even cite that.

CALLER: No, they wouldn’t!

RUSH: They didn’t cite the real job creation going on in the states. Wisconsin’s one.

CALLER: Mmm-hmm.

RUSH: What about Ohio? Is Ohio’s jobs picture improving?

CALLER: Ohio has dropped somewhat. I couldn’t tell you the exact figures but it’s improving.

RUSH: Yeah, North Dakota’s going nuts ’cause of their oil boom, but I think that’s a Democrat governor if I’m not mistaken.

CALLER: I think I remember Oklahoma, hearing they were way down.

RUSH: Oh, yeah, Oklahoma, too, yeah. But far as Washington’s concerned, Oklahoma is not even in the country.

CALLER: (chuckles) That’s true.

RUSH: You have a good point.

CALLER: Thank you.

RUSH: Virginia? Virginia looks pretty good, Bob McConnell. But see, that’s DC, that’s the DC suburbs. That’s government. And employment there is great. Unemployment in the federal government is 4%. That’s the full-time jobs being added. A lot of them are federal government jobs if you want to know the truth. And guess what we learned today from the Washington Free Beacon? I just saw this on Drudge. It’s probably been up there awhile and I just missed it. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is the outfit that puts out the unemployment numbers. We learn today that two of the leading economists at the BLS are big Obama donors. Now, it doesn’t mean anything. Of course not. Nothing to see there. Two leading economists at the BLS just happened to come up with the miraculous way of lowering the unemployment rate four-tenths of a point — or was it three? I think it was 8.1 to 7.8, in the month before the election. Move on, folks. Nothing to see here. Nothing to see.