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Rush Limbaugh

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RUSH: They’re all upset in the Drive-By Media that Jack Welch and I accused the Bureau of Labor Statistics of fudging the unemployment numbers last week, and we were even cautioned by conservative thinkers over the weekend not to suggest that the numbers were cooked. “Don’t go there! It’s dangerous territory.” They begged me and Jack Welch to walk that back. It was just a statistical anomaly.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: A little prelude on the unemployment number segment coming up in just a few moments. The Gallup poll — the Gallup people, by the way, are being sued by the regime. I’m not kidding. David Axelrod asked Holder at the DOJ to look into Gallup when they published some polling results they didn’t like. I’m not making that up. So Gallup is under investigation by the regime. The chief economist at Gallup is saying that Obama’s job numbers look like they have been cooked, the number last week, the 7.8%. Gallup’s guy is under investigation by the regime. Jack Welch thought the numbers have been cooked. I thought the numbers have been cooked.

A number of distinguished conservative thinkers in the Beltway cautioned all of us, “Don’t go there. Don’t get into this conspiracy on the regime cooking the numbers. It’s a statistical anomaly.” Well, whatever. When you boil it all down, what we’re being told is that 7.8, 7.9, 8.1, 8.2, it’s the new normal, right? The bottom line is, I don’t want to settle for an unemployment number 7.8%, folks. And we’re being told to settle. That’s good news? It isn’t good news. Eight-point-two is not good news, either. The U-6 number, 14.7. That’s the total unemployment number people who are looking and who’ve given up looking for work. That’s the real number, 14.7. And it’s obviously probably higher than that. But the cost is in real human terms. These numbers are just statistics. They represent real human lives severely damaged, and I resent deeply this notion that we’re to be pleased with 7.8%.

“But, Mr. Limbaugh, it represents a positive trend.”

It does not represent a positive trend. It represents a new normal, a new country where we’re not expected to do any better than that. We’re being told to reelect Obama on this basis. Why, is this as good as it gets, then? There’s a reason for this. There’s a reason why this country’s being asked to accept a bunch of new normals that are morally depraved, culturally deficient. There’s a reason for this. I used to believe that the election of George W. Bush represented the rebuke of Clintonism. And by Clintonism, I mean everything that came along with Bill Clinton. Lying is now good for you. It’s okay to be found to be lying under oath. It’s okay to have sex in the Oval Office, as long as it didn’t affect your job. It was basically okay to be as depraved and morally deficient as Bill Clinton was.

I thought the election of George W. Bush was an official rebuke, the country was rebuking that and finally saying enough is enough. I remember I was invited to have dinner with some baseball people at the White House a month or so after Bush had been elected, and I led a toast expressing appreciation for the fact that the White House, the Oval Office, were now in much better hands, morally and spiritually, any number of ways, and all the baseball people agreed with me. They all said, “I agree with what he said,” which I’m used to. I don’t think we’ve rebuked it now. I think I was wrong. I think the eight years of George W. Bush were just an interval.

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If Obama and the Democrats and the media succeed in redefining current economic circumstances as the new norm, I believe we can trace this acceptance, this lowering of standards, right back to Bill Clinton and I’m speaking both politically and morally as it relates to the culture of our society and the political nature of our society. Bill Clinton was the architect of the acceptance of moral failure and decline at the upper levels of leadership in our country. Sex in the Oval Office with an intern that basically ruined that girl’s life. All the Kathleen Willey’s and the Juanita Broaddricks, I mean, the women were legion. And we were told, no big deal, none of our business. Newsweek spiked the Lewinsky story. Stop and think of what was going on in the Oval Office.

I remember that night with the baseball guys and their wives at the White House, Bush gave everybody a tour. We got to the Oval Office and everybody wanted to see where the Lewinsky stuff happened, which kinda ticked me off. I mean, I can understand it. But of all the things that had gone on in the Oval Office historically, to want to see where Clinton and Lewinsky did the deeds, it kind of ticked me off, if I could be honest with you about it. Not at the people, just at the situation. It was natural thing to be curious about. They didn’t ask Bush. They asked each other, “Where do you think it was?”

“Mr. President, where is the study off of the oval office?” They all knew where it happened, so Bush would show them. Nobody said Clinton’s name, everybody knew what was going on. I’m sitting there, do you realize the really historical stuff… Bill Clinton used to show up all sweaty from a jog in his T-shirt and running shorts. Ronald Reagan would never even take his jacket off in the Oval Office. Nobody could deny that we’ve had declining standards, morally and culturally, and every adult generation thinks that. But at the highest levels of leadership, it’s a relatively new thing, this kind. So I believe, just as Clinton is the architect of the acceptance of moral failure and decline at the upper levels of leadership, so is Barack Obama the architect of acceptance of moral failure and decline within the culture at large, including our economy.

The triumph of morons who just accept the current economy as it’s the new normal, that’s just what it is. Maybe they’re too young to remember it any better. Maybe they’ve got hero worship or idolatry of Obama, the celebrity of the United States rather than president. And since he’s so cool, that whatever happens is thus cool. But it isn’t cool. Seven-point-eight percent unemployment is not cool; 14.7% total unemployment, not cool. Forty-seven percent of the country on food stamps. Not cool. Four or five-dollar-a-gallon gasoline. Not cool. Our ambassador in Libya dead. Uncool. Nothing that has happened these last four years under Obama’s tutelage is cool. But it is. Many people just accept it. It’s the new norm.

Accompanying all of this is a suspicion — and this is the real troubling thing — while we have 47% on food stamps, and while we have 14.7% unemployed, 25 million or whatever, while the universe of jobs has shrunk, while there is no economic growth, while we’re going in debt like mad, we are sentencing children and grandchildren to lives of servitude based on the tax rates they’re going to have face in order to deal with this debt, the entitlement mess, it’s an absolute disaster that Obama has wrought, and in the midst of all this the people we now suspect are those who’ve achieved, those people of success and achievement and accomplishment.

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People in those categories, in those groups now represent what’s considered threatening. They’re now the targets of our society. Not the people responsible for the moral failing, not the people responsible for the lowering of standards, both in the new norm economically, the unemployment number, and culturally as well, but if you succeed, if you have a good income, if you are improving your quality of life and your family, you have become what is threatening in our society. And you are the one that has to be dealt with. You somehow have to be gotten even with. You are the one that has a target on your back. You’re not paying your fair share. You’re not carrying your full weight. You’re not doing what’s expected of you. It’s upside down.

So while there is a general acceptance among the Moron Class for all of this deviancy and economic activity defined down, there’s now a suspicion of accomplished, educated, achieved people. They somehow represent what’s wrong with America! People like Mitt Romney, for example, and Paul Ryan. We’re told that they represent what’s wrong, and I think all this is traceable to Bill Clinton and the acceptance of the new norms that we were told were the new norms during his administration.

I’ve thought about this. I was reflecting on this over the weekend. I actually think Bill Clinton himself has been more damaging to our country than Watergate was. Watergate is considered the scandal of all scandals. I think Clinton’s eight years — and I’m not talking about just policy or issues. The overall decline in what was expected of leaders, the overall decline in the requirements that we had of people leading us.

They be better people than average. Smarter, morally rock solid — as much as anybody can be. (I mean, everybody fails.) If it were to happen today… Just to illustrate? If Watergate were to happen today, and it was a Democrat president, it would be accepted. It would maybe be, in fact, praised as a brilliant political move in winning the election. Because that’s all anything is about is the reelection of a Democrat.

So if a Democrat today perpetrated a Watergate or worse, it would be accepted. And anybody who criticized it or raised questions about it would be considered to be a troublemaker or a rabble-rouser or an “extreme right-winger” or what have you. And all because of the permitted and accepted rehabilitation of Bill Clinton to the status he now holds. All the stuff that he did has been forgotten, thrown away, or not kept properly in context.

I just hate hearing — I’m offended to no end — that 7.8% unemployment is the new norm and that that’s something that somebody deserves to be reelected for. Yeah, ’cause it’s way down from 8.9% or whatever it was. Oh, yeah, right. Nothing’s any better, and everybody knows the job situation isn’t any better! Everybody knows that people are not advancing in their careers.

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Everybody knows that if there are jobs being created, they’re part time. Everybody knows this is an absolute mess, and yet we’re being told for the pure sake of reelecting a Democrat that this is the new norm. In other words, “Get used to it,” and it’s much easier to get used to it if we’ve been told previously, “Just accept that we’re gonna have leaders getting Lewinskys in the Oval Office! It’s not a big deal when a Democrat does it.”

We have a scandal out there right now. For the second election in a row, the Obama campaign is soliciting campaign donations from foreigners under $200 so they don’t have to be reported. Watergate every day is the new norm with your average Democrat administration — and anybody who wants to call attention to it is just a rabble-rousing troublemaker.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here’s that quote from the Gallup chief economist: “Friday’s [labor] report of a drop to 7.8% [unemployment] in the Household survey seemed to surprise everyone… The problem is that even though the Household survey tends to be very volatile, this decline seems to lack face-validity, particularly after the prior month’s numbers.” Gallup is questioning the 7.8% unemployment number. And even if you don’t question it — even if you don’t want to go there — you don’t have to accept it!

It’s not acceptable.

We don’t have to settle for this.

This should not be the new norm.

I want the old American norm back.

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