Greetings, folks.  How are you?  Great to have you with us.  Rush Limbaugh here once again ready to execute broadcast excellence as we meet and surpass all audience expectations.  Telephone number, if you want to be on the program is 800-282-2882.

The reason I mentioned 61 speeches and not a word about terrorism or ISIS is that an elderly priest, 86, was beheaded in his church in Normandy today in France by two ISIS knifemen shouting, “Daesh!” after they took nuns and worshipers hostage at the French church.  Police then shot both the attackers dead, began the search for bombs.

There was no word on whether or not the church was air-conditioned.  Now, if the church was air-conditioned, the Daily Mail here, the UK, has buried the lead.  If the church was air-conditioned it might explain why ISIS went in there.  Well, no.  John Kerry said that air-conditioning is as big a threat as ISIS is.  You know, ISIS, they hear this stuff.  Can you imagine the ISIS leaders: “Are you kidding?  We now have to battle air-conditioning?  Are you kidding us?  Air-conditioning is as bad as we are?”  So I think they might begin to factor that in to targets.

I mention all of this because that’s insanity, to suggest that air-conditioning poses as great a threat as ISIS or militant Islamic terrorism or any other kind of terrorism, but that’s what we get from the Democrat Party.

Now, folks, I want to try to share an observation here with you.  I watched the Democrat convention, I watch all of these kind of things that we saw last night, like this year’s convention.  I watch them now with a different perspective than I used to.  I used to watch these and gather material that I could use to be funny, to be informative, to be entertaining, while at the same time condemning what I thought was worth being condemned that might be said or was said at any of these conventions.  But the central focus was to laugh at it, it’s so ridiculous.  What we hear from the modern Democrat Party is ridiculous.

But, as I say, I now watch with a different perspective.  I watch with a lot of sadness.  I watch this lunacy that we saw last night, and if you didn’t watch it, don’t worry, you’ll get enough of a flavor for it after I finish the program today. You’ll know.  It was sheer lunacy.  A lot of it was delusional and deranged.  A lot of it was unhinged.  The reason that I watch it with sadness is the realization now that close to 50% of the people in this country who vote eat it up.

They love it.  They applaud it.  They think that it is great.  There’s no critical thinking.  If there were critical thinking, the Democrats wouldn’t get out of that city with 10%, 20% of the vote, ’cause everything is so contradictory.  So it’s with a different lens that I watch these things now, and it’s with a different style, shall you say, that I tell you about what I saw.  I used to confidently laugh. I used to believe that nowhere near a majority of people are gonna fall for the garbage that makes up a Democrat convention and what you hear from the podium.  It isn’t the case anymore.

I now watch this stuff and cringe. I watch this stuff and I try to imagine believing it, I try to imagine falling for it, and in order to do that I have to somehow try to understand psychology because that’s what the Democrat Party is anymore.  It’s a psychological pitch.  The Democrat Party has done many destructive things on its way to acquiring power.  But among the most destructive things the Democrat Party has done is destroy the concepts of self-reliance, optimism, and goodness.

The Democrat convention, it was exactly as I predicted last night.  We got speaker after speaker, picture after picture ultimately of doom and gloom of misery and suffering.  We had people praising the sitting president for being remarkable in his successes while at the same time detailing everything wrong and horrible in this country, and they happen to be the same things the current president detailed as horribly wrong at both of his conventions, in 2008 and 2012.

I had to sit through the specter of speaker after speaker after speaker tell everybody what’s wrong and how they have no hope and no chance unless some of the people in that room happen to be elected to office.  What a message.  You’re lost, you’re hopeless, you’re aimless, you got nothing unless we win elections.  And these people are applauding it and eating it up, and here we are seven-and-a-half years into the very destructive Barack Obama administration, and that’s acknowledged.  Speaker after speaker unwittingly acknowledges the decline that has happened to this country, although they don’t of course attach that to Obama.

They use the Limbaugh Theorem, and they act like Obama’s fighting a valiant battle against these dark forces that are unseen that are wreaking all this havoc on the United States and the people sitting in the convention hall.  The Democrats are the only people in this country who are targeted, and they’re targeted by Wall Street, they’re targeted by Big Pharmaceutical, they’re targeted by Big Oil.

I mean, it was the same thing recycled that I have heard every convention. But I have to say to myself as I watched this, the ways that I have chosen to deal with this maybe have not been the most effective ways of dealing with it because the number of people that buy into it seems to be growing.  The number of people that buy into this abject dystopia that was on display last night seems to be growing.  The explanation has to be psychological.

The Democrats have succeeded in beating people down.  The Democrats have succeeded in taking initiative and hope. “Hope” is just a word now. They have succeeded in taking drive and ambition out of people.  They have convinced the people that vote for them that there isn’t an escape from the horrors of this country unless the Democrat Party wins elections.  That’s the only recipe for people being able to succeed. Of course it’s absurd, it’s insane, it’s lunacy.

People that vote Democrat are some of the most depressed people you’ll run into.  They’re some of the angriest people you’ll run into, despite — in these last 7-1/2 years — getting everything they want, everything they thought would lead them to their utopia.  But by their own admission at their own convention last night, they’re no closer to utopia than they’ve ever been.  And they’re never gonna get there because it isn’t possible.

And, of course, the reason that everybody in that hall is justified in feeling miserable and despondent, depressed, and out of sorts is because there are Republicans.  Yes.  There are Republicans, and there are conservatives, and that’s why! The Democrats never explain why they’re not able to wipe out the Republicans.  The Democrats never explain to their charges why it is that the people responsible for this misery continue to triumph — i.e., Republicans.

If the Republicans are the sole factor in all of the decline and the misery, then why don’t the Democrats just get rid of them?  But they don’t.  The Republicans are still there, despite being the problem, despite being the explanation.  Picture after picture.  I mean, some of these speakers try to dress it up.  Cory Booker tried to be Barack Obama of 2004 last night, but he didn’t pull it off.  Did any of you in there watch? I have to ask. Did you watch this? (interruption) Good.  I don’t blame you.   Snerdley, you did?

All right, so you did…? (interruption) Well, I’m not gonna play… I don’t have a lot of Cory Booker, but the guy went way too long. Talk about Trump shouting? This guy shouted everything, and he was trying to be as uplifting and positive.  He was redefining the purpose of the Declaration of Independence.  “It’s really a declaration of interdependence,” because, you know, that means nobody can do it on their own.  While talking about the greatness of the Founders, he then proceeded to destroy the concept of rugged individualism.

The theme of the night last night: “You can’t do anything on your own; we can only do everything together.  You can’t do a thing on your own.  You might get somewhere on your own, but you can’t go far.  You can go fast by yourself, you can go fast on your own, but you can’t go all the way.  You can only get there together.”  Brought the house down.  “Yaaaay!”  I’m sitting there saying, “This is gobbledygook.”  This is the kind of stuff that 17-year-old girls used to find in calendars and post on the bedroom wall, and now it’s substance at the Democrat National Convention.”

So, no, folks, we’re still gonna have our fun with it and we’re still gonna point it all out, and we’re still going to laugh at it.  But at the same time, I no longer am going to sit here and blindly assume that the vast majority of Americans are gonna also find it ridiculous because the vast majority don’t.  I don’t know where we are, but I’m telling you: At least 40% of the people of this country if they were to have watched this last night would have thought it was greatness, would have thought it was right on, would have thought it was all the answer.

They would have thought the Democrats are the only people that care, the only people that love, the only people that understand, the only people that feel, and they sign right on to it — the contradictions and the hypocrisy notwithstanding.  We got a bunch of speakers last night, supposedly the stars of the party.  They had Elizabeth Warren.  She got booed.  You didn’t hear it unless you knew it was there and rewound and watched it again.  There were people shouting, “We don’t trust you! We don’t trust you!” during her speech.

They were Bernie supporters.  I didn’t hear it at first.  They don’t closed-caption what the audience says if there’s any hecklers, and I’m watching… Of course, I have to listen with my cochlear implant so I just thought it was crowd noise.  I can’t distinguish boos from applause.  I have to know which is which in order to hear it, like the Debbie BS sound bites yesterday.  To me, it was indistinguishable.  Somebody told me they were booing her; then I knew.

It wasn’t until this morning that I found out that she was being heckled last night, and it’s not because the Drive-Bys told anybody.  In fact, Andrea Mitchell, NBC News, Washington, pointed out today (you’ll hear this coming up) that Elizabeth Warren did not have the room captivated.  She said 40% of the crowd was sitting on its hands last night, and F. Chuck Todd came along and upbraided her.  F. Chuck Todd said (paraphrased), “You’re not supposed to give it away like that,” and F. Chuck Todd said, “The people at home didn’t see it that way.

“And that’s what we report is what the people at home saw.”  But it wasn’t unity in there last night.  And there wasn’t any particular happiness in there last night.  And… Well, I don’t know.  There might have been happiness the way these people define it.  I mean, who knows?  You’ve heard the concept “happily miserable”?  I think that was this room last night — or what is it, “miserably happy”?  I forget which it is.  Before the convention began, our favorite congressman from Georgia, Hank Johnson…

This is the guy who worried that Guam might be swallowed by the Pacific Ocean because too many people lived on one side of the island and they might tip it into the ocean or something like this. I forget.  Hank Johnson said… He compared Israeli settlers to termites.  The American flag was not on display last night.  You could not see it.  In fact, I don’t think… I’ll have to double-check, but I think the color red was not seen on camera last night.  There were various shades of blue and gold and mauve.

But red — which, of course, identifies the Tea Party, the Republican Party.  I don’t think… Even in the TV sets, I don’t think there was any red.  Now, some of the people wore red or pink, but the Palestinian flag was raised in the audience at the Democrat National Convention; the American flag wasn’t.  Palestinian flag.  There was one other crazy, wacko flag that was parading around.