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RUSH: I have never — and I shouldn’t say this — I have never cared about a State of the Union address less than the one I care about today. In fact, my temptation is not even to discuss it, because to discuss it is to fall prey to the whole narrative the Drive-By Media is setting up, which is it’s the most important thing in the news today.


And I’m sorry, they are not State of the Union speeches anymore. All they are are empty promises. There’s nothing about the State of the Union in this, there’s nothing what it was traditionally meant to be. And it hasn’t been for a while. I understand that. It’s a vote-buying scheme is what the whole thing is. And it’s an insult to intelligence and all that. And you realize that 90% of the stuff that is, well, promised or suggested or offered as a serious intention, never happens anyway.

It never comes to pass. And yet here we are, the Drive-By Media is as excited as they’ve ever been about anything because it’s something that’s standard operating procedure, presidents at the State of the Union show up, make it out to be the biggest thing in the world, and maybe at one time it was. And I will allow, maybe I’m getting cynical. I don’t know. It doesn’t mean, folks, I’m not gonna watch it. I’m gonna watch it ’cause it’s my job. I’m just telling you, who wants to sit there and look at the TV for an hour and 15 minutes and be lied to? Who wants to sit and look at the TV for an hour and 15 minutes and do nothing but get frustrated? I have to take notes, mental or otherwise.

But the main thing is falling prey to what I have often referred to here as the daily soap opera script, you know, get looped into it and participating in it even though it’s — I don’t know. It’s not that it isn’t real. It’s the establishment, pomp and circumstance and doing what the establishment does, and it’s basically a night where we’re all told how wonderful government is, how great government is, how much bigger and greater government is, how much more compassionate government can be, how much more compassionate in giving government’s gonna be, and none of it ever matters, positively, or very little of it does.

And then we’re gonna have the guests up there, guests of Moochelle Obama sitting up in the gallery. We’re gonna have a DREAMer, have a couple of illegal immigrants, gonna have people that escaped Cuba. I don’t know, folks. It probably doesn’t help that it’s this Regime in charge of it.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT


RUSH: Hey, quick little pop quiz. Who said this: “For decades we have known the days of cheap and easily accessible oil were numbered.” Who said that? I’ll give you a hint. It was said in 2010. I’ll give you a second hint. It was said from the Oval Office. If you guessed Obama, you’re right.

On June 15th — and I’m just offering this as an opportunity. I want you to keep this in mind as you listen to the State of the Union show tonight. On June 15th, 2010, the president, Barack Hussein O addressed the nation about the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. And the president was wrong. The president was phenomenally wrong.

He said, “For decades we have failed to act with the sense of urgency that this challenge requires. Time and again the path forward has been blocked, not only by oil industry lobbyists, but also by a lack of political courage and candor. The consequences of our inaction are now in plain sight. Countries like China are investing in clean energy jobs and industries that should be right here in America. Each day we send nearly $1 billion of our wealth to foreign countries for their oil, and today as we look to the Gulf, we see an entire way of life being threatened by a menacing cloud of black crude. We cannot consign our children to this future. For decades we have known the days of cheap and easily accessible oil are numbered.”

He was dead wrong. He is so wrong. Have you seen the numbers on the economy, the approval numbers on the economy? They are way up, people think the economy is great, and is this the reason why. Gasoline prices are down. By the way, there’s a dirty little secret but why gasoline prices are down, too, and I don’t see a whole lot of people figuring it out. Well, it’s partially the Saudis, but that’s not the primary reason that the price of oil is plummeting and the primary reason the price of gasoline is plummeting.

My point here is that Obama — and he wasn’t alone — was dead wrong. By the way, that BP oil spill, what was it, just a couple of weeks later they couldn’t find the oil? All that oil that spilled, they couldn’t find it. Remember that? Remember the controversy, they couldn’t figure out where it went? So we got all these cockamamie stories, “Well, you know, it sank,” or it did something, “but it’s out there, it’s polluting.”

No, it’s just that it was eaten. It was eaten by seawater. Powerful stuff, seawater. But, anyway, the president said, “For decades we’ve known the days of cheap and easily accessible oil were numbered.” And look at us now. The price of gasoline average across the country, $2.14. That means in some places across the country it’s under two bucks. And right on schedule, what are governments doing? Bellyaching. Yep. Tax revenue plummeting, uh-oh, need some emergency action. Raise taxes on gasoline, because in some places it isn’t — the federal tax is static, it’s 18 cents no matter what, but states, sometimes the tax rate floats, and revenue may not be the same when the gas price plummets like it’s doing.


Now, the real reason — and this is the unspoken reason, and it’s not the sole reason, but one of the leading or primary reasons why the price of oil is down and gasoline is demand. Demand is down. And the demand is down because the US economy’s in the tank. With 92.8 million Americans not working, fewer and fewer people are traveling. You won’t find very many experts acknowledge this because it contradicts the idea that the economy is roaring back. It’s not just the Saudis artificially lowering the price, trying to damage fracking and all that. I mean, they could do only so much, but the power of the US economy can either add to that or overcome that, depending on how many other oil producing outfits participate with the Saudis.

But the demand being down is a massive factor here that nobody’s talking about, and the fascinating thing, or interesting thing about that is the demand is down because the US economy is not chugging along, the US economy is not going gangbusters. Contrary to what the Washington establishment and Drive-By Media and everybody else would have you believe.

Let me take a quick time-out. We’ll come back, review some past State of the Union stuff just to show you what I mean about how so little of what is proposed in States of the Union actually ever comes to pass.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: From the Washington Times, the headline: “Obama Has Worst State of the Union Record Since Ford, Study Shows — Judging by his recent history, it doesnÂ’t really matter what President Obama says in TuesdayÂ’s State of the Union address — Congress is going to ignore him anyway. Mr. Obama has the second-worst record of getting his State of the Union policy requests enacted into law of any president in the last five decades, according to an analysis by two scholars that puts him only above the unelected two-year presidency of Gerald Ford.”

Now, you might look at this as good news. I’m not sure the country could have survived with Obama getting much more of what he proposed in these speeches, because he’s proposed the sink and everything else. But, see, we’re not out of the woods yet, because these last two years, I don’t think we’ve begun to see even half of what’s headed our way in these last two years. And I know I’ve said this over and over again, so I’m not gonna beat the dead horse, but the Republicans have made it clear they’re not gonna take any steps to stop him.


He’s got two years to complete this fundamental transformation, and it’s clear the Constitution is an impediment or an obstacle that he doesn’t think is a serious one now. He’s not gonna have much trouble going past it. So this State of the Union address, it doesn’t matter whether Congress authorizes some of this stuff or not, what’s to stop him from doing it?

You might say, “Well, he just can’t just go out and raise taxes willy-nilly. I mean, you gotta have Congress do that via regulation.” Don’t reject this just out of hand. I mean, there’s so many things going on now that people said were not possible because of the Constitution. There’s so many violations of the Constitution taking place now, and it’s become something that happens with such regularity that people have stopped noticing and have just begun to accept it.

Even on our side they say, “Well that’s just what Obama’s doing, and as usual we have to wait ’til he’s gone to address any of this. We have to wait ’til he served out his term, and then whoever’s next elected will begin the process of reversing some of this stuff.”

But that isn’t gonna be easy, either, because Obama’s not just gonna leave town and let everything he’s done to transform the country be unraveled. That’s one of the reasons why he’s gonna maintain a home in Washington. But all that’s for down the road. It’s a fact that he has promised time and again to do a whole bunch of things, and very little of it has actually happened. But now in these last two years where he’s not concerned whether Congress goes along and passes anything, we’ll just have to keep a sharp eye.

Now, you know presidents, when they go to the State of the Union show, they try to list and rattle off their accomplishments from over the last year or during their presidential terms. So what will Obama point to as his accomplishments since the last State of the Union show? Is he gonna brag about the rise of ISIS? Is he gonna brag about how we’ve lost Iraq and we’re the on brink of losing Afghanistan?

Did you see that ISIS killed 13 young boys because they watched a soccer game? Yeah, so is Obama gonna talk about how he has stopped the rise of ISIS? Is he gonna brag about how we’ve lost Iraq, gonna brag about we’re on the brink of losing Afghanistan? Is he gonna brag about freeing dozens of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay? Is he going to brag about trading five of the worst of them for a man who may have deserted his post, that would be Bergdahl? Is Obama gonna brag about swapping five Cuban terrorists, a couple of whom were actually convicted of murder, for some American hostages the Castros were holding for bargaining chips?


I mean, yeah, he’s got a lot to brag about here, doesn’t he? Is he gonna brag about 92.8 million Americans not working? Is he gonna brag about the absolute mess that HealthCare.gov has been from the get-go? Is he going to brag about all the states he has sued who have attempted to pass legislation in those states to enforce already existing immigration laws? Is he gonna brag about how he has stopped deporting almost anyone except the most hardened criminals? Is he gonna brag about getting to the bottom of the IRS targeting of the Tea Party? Is he gonna brag about getting to the bottom of what happened at Benghazi? Is he gonna brag about finally finding out what happened with the VA scandals and straightening that out?

Or is he gonna skip listing all of these accomplishments and just move on to listing even more ways he wants to buy votes for Democrats in the future? Again, a study out today by a couple of scholars that reports that Obama actually has the second worse State of the Union success rate for any president over the last 50 years, and that would be Gerald Ford, who wasn’t even elected.

Look at what Gerald Ford faced. Gerald Ford faced a country and a media still wallowing in Watergate. Ford’s success rate was 28%, Obama’s is 30, 30% of what Obama has proposed has actually happened, and it’s going to be probably more of the same tonight. And don’t forget that for two years of his tenure, Obama even had a Democrat-controlled Congress, which makes this 30% success rate somewhat unimpressive.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: So I checked this e-mail during the break, and it’s, “Dear Rush: I’m getting worried. It sounds like you’re getting burned out. It sounds like you don’t care anymore. That would be horrible, Rush. Please say it ain’t so.” It’s in reference to the fact that I’m not interested in watching the State of the Union, and I’m not. I’m not. It’s because I’m burned out on this stuff, folks. I know what’s gonna happen.

I do not like watching this guy. I do not like watching having my intelligence insulted. I know what’s gonna happen. I know the moon’s gonna be promised. I know he’s gonna be applauded from left and right with standing ovations and all this stuff. At the end of the day, none of this may ever become law in the traditional sense, but that’s no solace for me. One thing that’s true about the ratings for State of the Union shows (I talked this yesterday) is they are plummeting.

Now, to me, this is actually a blessing, in the current circumstance. It’s still a lot of people that watch, but these ratings are way down, particularly compared to when Obama was first inaugurated back in 2009 and 2010. The numbers are way down. People are just not as fascinated. They know in advance what’s gonna be said, those that follow the news and pay attention. Obama’s been driving all over the country and flying all over the place doing appearance after appearance because the ratings with down.

So he’s not relying on just one speech on one night to get the propaganda out. He’s going a lot of places in advance, and he’ll go a lot of places tomorrow and the rest of this week afterwards and try to get as many media events out of this as possible. And of course the thing about it that distresses me is not the nuts and bolts or the guts of it. This is just… We’re gonna have a solid hour and 15 minutes tonight of how the Democrat Party is filled with compassion, loves people, only wants the best

And the opposite’s gonna be thought of and said about the Republicans, subtly or directly. It’s just gonna add up to more of a PR mess. I’m gonna have to deal with it in the ensuing days anyway, and all I’m telling you is, there are things I’d rather do. Like Justified premiers tonight. I just got a note from Nick Searcy who plays Art as one of the marshals, the head marshal on the show.

He says, “Hey, Rush, you don’t have to watch State of the Union. We got the season finale premier tonight.” This is the last season premier, final season premier. That’s true. But there’s always TiVo. Don’t fret it, folks. I’ll watch enough of it to be able to show up here and speak of it in a informed way. But my instincts are telling me that to do that is to fall into the trap of helping Obama and the Democrats convey what they want conveyed. It’s all smoke and mirrors.

This is an interesting. I’ve been holding this story for couple of days. It’s a Reuters story. “Barack Obama enters the final two years of his presidency with a blemish on his legacy that looks impossible to erase: The decline of the middle class that he has promised to rescue.” What is this from Reuters? A little truth here? Right here, that open is exactly why the State of the Union is being done the way it’s being done tonight and why all of these talks of tax increases on the rich are taking place.

Obama has fixed it so that the only way the middle class benefits is via the redistribution of wealth (and that means government benefits) instead of going out and working and getting jobs. “Barack Obama enters the final two years of his presidency with a blemish on his legacy that looks impossible to erase: the decline of the middle class he has promised to rescue.” In reality, it is impossible to erase. It is what it is. But that’s what tonight’s gonna be about: erasing this and making it look like things have never been better.

Frankly, folks, I don’t want to be lied to about it. Things are not looking better than ever. There’s nothing Obama has done that sets this country up for vast growth and improvement. It’s the exact opposite. “The revival of middle-class jobs has been one of Obama’s mantras since he took office in 2009 fighting the worst economic crisis in generations. It was a major theme of his last State of the Union address and is expected to feature in the one scheduled for [tonight].


“Administration officials said on Saturday the president would propose higher capital gains taxes…” Yeah? How’s that gonna help anybody in the middle class? “[N]ew fees on large financial firms”? They’re not gonna help anybody in the middle class. “[A]nd other measures to raise $320 billion for programs and tax breaks aimed at the middle class.” Somebody explain to me: What “program” has anybody in the middle class become a member of the upper middle class by utilizing?

This is what insults me. Government programs do not make a career. Government programs do not improve your standard of living. Sitting around and waiting for government to tax people that you think have too much money and getting all happy when you think they’re harmed, and then sitting around for whatever Obama decides to redistribute to you? That’s called “growing the middle class”? Sorry, it’s insulting. It’s not how you grow anything.

It’s how you create voters and dependency and you destroy people’s lives, actually, by taking away from them their dignity and their humanity and their self-confidence and everything else. You create a bunch of people — as many as you can — sitting around, waiting for a benefit from government here, a benefit from government there, access to a new program over here. That doesn’t lift the middle class up. It lifts the Democrat Party up. It doesn’t lift people. It doesn’t lift the middle class at all.

This has never worked.

This is what really grates me.

For thousands of years, as often as it’s been tried, socialism is a miserable failure. And here we’re gonna sit through an hour and however many minutes listening to yet another presentation on how wonderful it is, how filled with compassion it is, how it’s the only thing that’s fair and all of that rotgut. And it’s a failure! It does not work; it does not improve people’s standard of living. There’s no way government taking money out of the private sector can improve standards of living.

The only thing that grows after Obama works this magic is the government. Look, I just fell into my own trap. I mentioned “private sector” after spending a bunch of time yesterday saying we need to broom the term.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: So the bottom line is that they know, they were reporting a couple days ago that Obama’s heading into the State of the Union show with a big blemish, and that is the decline of the middle class. The whole point of this thing is to put a lie to the truth and talk about the massive expansion of middle class. You know, I do get a little mad, probably sound angrier than I really am. But to me it’s common sense. Here’s the government and it is what’s called the public sector. And over here is the rest of the economy. And over here is where the United States is the greatest superpower in the world, not over here in the government, except for the military. Over here, this is the free enterprise economy.

Now, for government to get bigger, ’cause it doesn’t produce anything, it doesn’t make anything, for government to get bigger, it has to take away from the free enterprise economy. Now, you tell me how in the world there can be growth for anybody in the free enterprise economy when the government continues to take things out of it? Health care, one-sixth of it’s now gone, just in health care alone. But every program that raises taxes and takes money out of the pockets of people that work or people that run businesses makes the free enterprise economy shrink.

And as the total economic output of this country becomes dominated more and more, or a percentage of it is taken greater and greater by the government, then the economy cannot possibly be growing, and people in it cannot experience the kind of wild upswings that we’ve known in the past. So Obama, while daily chipping away at the free enterprise economy and growing the government is telling everybody that this is how you raise the middle class, this is how you elevate the middle class, by taking money away from them? Don’t kid yourself. Raising taxes on the rich with the so-called — you talk about trickle-down, you talk about trickle-down never works, raising taxes on the rich and somehow government’s gonna give that money back to the middle class and everybody, how — it’s never happened that way.

The whole thing is so bogus, and everybody should know it by now. Obama should be a laughingstock proposing this stuff. I guess that’s what’s really frustrates me, that it still works. And I know why it works. It’s an emotional pitch. People have been conditioned to be happy when they think people that have more money than they do are suffering or being targeted and what have you. It’s despicable stuff, these people on the left have done.

In the meantime, I’m gonna go to the phones and start with Jim in Brookfield, Illinois. Hi, Jim. Thanks for calling, sir. Great to have you here.

CALLER: Thank you, Rush. I appreciate that. I’m on WLS, home of the Rush Limbaugh Show in Chicago. And I just wanted to say I’d noticed a really odd juxtaposition. On one side you have Obama talking about everyone’s getting a piece of this and getting a little something, and just the other day the Bears hired a new coach, John Fox from Denver.

RUSH: That’s right.

CALLER: And his words were “earn” “compete” “try out.” So in 24 hours you get a really interesting juxtaposing between Democrat verbs and Republican verbs. And I’m a teacher, I teach with the city colleges. It’s something I had to point out.

RUSH: Well, we gotta be very careful. We don’t know if John Fox is a Republican or conservative.

CALLER: No, I’m not speaking for his politics; I spoke for his verbiage.

RUSH: You just have to be very careful. I don’t want to make any assumptions about that. But I get your point, I mean, here’s the new coach of the Bears and he’s talking about how this team is gonna improve, and everybody on his team is going to have to compete, and they’re only gonna take the best. It’s gonna be about showing up on time and it’s gonna be working hard and it’s gonna be competing against people. If you get a roster spot on this team you’re gonna be the best we can find for that position.

And over here is Obama, promising giveaways and freebies and getting even with the success stories. If John Fox were to be consistent with Obama what he would say was, “Okay, our highest paid player here is our quarterback, Jay Cutler. Jay Cutler is under contract for $127 million over so many years, but we’ve looked at the way Jay Cutler’s played, and he’s nowhere near worth it. So what we’re gonna do, we’re gonna take a couple of million from Cutler here and give it to a free agent backup tight end.

“And then we’re gonna take another couple million from Cutler, we’re gonna give it to a guy we hope to draft in the first round out of college that we don’t even know can play yet. Then we’re gonna get another couple million from Cutler, and we’re gonna give it to the center, who is threatening to bolt for another team ’cause he doesn’t like having to have to snap the ball to Cutler, whose hands are on his butt every game. So that’s how we’re gonna make things fair on this team. We’re gonna take away from our highest-paid guy, and we’re gonna give it away to other people, and that’s how we’re gonna get great.”

That’s what John Fox would have said if he wanted to employ the Obama Democrat Party policy of success.

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