RUSH: Now, today, ladies and gentlemen, “President Barack Obama is seeking credit for an economic turnaround, using the fifth anniversary of the collapse of the Lehman Brothers investment bank to highlight signs of recovery and to warn against potentially market-rattling fights over the federal budget and the nation’s debt ceiling.” That’s right, you heard me. “Obama was scheduled to address the state of the economy Monday in a Rose Garden speech…”

Now, I don’t know if this is still on, what with the naval yard shooting. But the original plan (and it may still be in place) was a state of the economy speech in the Rose Garden to talk about how great it is, how wonderful it is, this massive recovery. Folks, in five years, we’re gonna talk about how great Obama has recovered this economy. He will be “accompanied by a selection of Americans who the White House says have benefited from the administration’s policies.

“The event marks the start of a week-long focus on the economy after a month of preoccupation with the crisis in Syria.” So they’re just making stuff up now. What in the world are they taking credit for? The only place where there’s anything to crow about economically is Washington, DC, and the areas of the country where there is fracking for oil going on — and a couple of other pockets. But there are 90 million Americans not working. The labor force participation rate has plummeted.

Unemployment? If the same number of jobs existed today as when Obama took office five years ago, the unemployment rate would be near 11%. There is no economic recovery. Try this. “Over 65,000 US Bridges in Need of Repair.” Again, the AP reporting.

“An Associated Press analysis of 607,380 bridges … showed that 65,605 were classified as ‘structurally deficient’ and 20,808 as ‘fracture critical.'” Of the 65,000 structurally deficient and 20,000 fracture critical, almost 8,000 were both. Now, I read that, and I said, “Well, now that’s impossible, because we did a stimulus. We had the now-famous stimulus bill in March of 2009, two months after Obama was inaugurated, that dealt with this. We rebuilt all the roads and bridges.”

While we were at it, we rebuilt all the crumbling schools — and while we were at it, we rebuilt some roads. And then rebuilding the roads, we rebuilt the bridges. What is this, 20,000 bridges are fracture critical? After how many stimuli? And the president’s gonna run out there in the Rose Garden today, that’s the plan, with a bunch of Americans that supposedly have benefited from his policies, claiming credit for a robust economic recovery. This is all to set the stage (with the media helping, of course) to alarm anybody over the fact the Republicans might shut down the government.

(Gasp!) No, not the Republicans again! Oh, no!

This is how it happens.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Well, that Rose Garden event that I was talking about is happening anyway. They moved it indoors because of the rain and the president right now giving some remarks on what they don’t know about the Washington Naval Yard shooting. So the speech on the robust economic recovery, or the event on the robust economic recovery, is still on, and he’s giving a speech, and he’s got the props up there. This is a guy said he didn’t care about “style points.”

He was asked about Putin’s op-ed in the New York Times. “I don’t care about style points. I’m not into style points and imagery and all that,” as he’s surrounded by supposed success cases in this massive economic recovery. The White House report on the economy just came out. Adjusted for inflation and population, only 45% of wealth lost during the recession has been recovered. That’s from the White House own report. It’s in a Daily Caller piece.

So we’re out here getting ready for the 2014 midterms, and we’re trying to head off what might be an effort to defund Obamacare in Congress via the next continuing resolution, so we’re throwing a party. We’re gonna throw a party about economic recovery and how great this recovery’s been. “Why, we finished that recession in 2009, and we’ve been going bang busters ever since! Why, ever since the recession happened, we’ve recovered 45% of the wealth that was lost. That’s how great this recovery’s been.”

That’s right.

Not even half the wealth that was lost in the market plunge and job losses, you name it, however you can tabulate the loss of wealth. And, by the way, that’s an aggregate number. Not everybody’s wealthy, but when you add up the amount of money that everybody lost, the category is called “wealth,” and this recovery’s been so robust — Ha! — that even the White House own report claims that we have recovered roughly 45% of the wealth lost during then recession.

Now, this report does say that over the past 3.5 years, our businesses have created 7.5 million new jobs. Our businesses have created 7.5 million new jobs. Well, the population’s grown seven million, roughly through the arrival of five million immigrants. The report does not mention wages or salaries, even though they have dropped for another all Americans since 2009. It doesn’t mention inequality, which has risen since 2009 — which I just, again, mentioned.

They’re just making it up, and they’re making it up at the White House because they know they can. Low-information voters are gonna believe it. The media is gonna amplify it. If anybody stands up and tries to speak truth to power, they’ll be shouted down as an extremist member of the Tea Party who’s a racist and doesn’t like the president because of his race. So they just get to make it up. (interruption)

Yeah, I think the low-information voter people believe it. Snerdley just asked, “Do you think the low-information voter people believe it, ’cause they’re the ones suffering?” We’ll have to wait and see. You know, the presidential approval poll numbers are all falling. But, again, nobody knows that. It isn’t being reported. So I don’t know that the low-information voter people who are suffering make of it. What’s likely to happen, Snerdley, since you asked is…

Look at what’s being reported. “We’re going gangbusters! The economy coming back! Whoa, seven million new jobs!” If you’re a low-information person, you’re saying, “My time is near, my ship’s about to come in, and I’m gonna make sure I’m not at the airport.” You’re gonna think positive. You’re gonna think it’s starting to happen for everybody. It hasn’t happened for you yet, but your time is coming. That’s exactly what they’re gonna count on. Everything is imagery.

Nothing’s real here in this country, the only geographical area where there is no sign of any economic trouble whatsoever is Washington. I kid you not — and even there, if you go to inner city Washington, there are signs of economic problems, but nobody talks about that. But where the ruling class lives and works, there isn’t any economic problem — and there wasn’t, even with the collapse. Everybody got bailed out.

I keep hearkening back to that great piece that we quoted at the time it came out, Angelo Codevilla, whose piece I quoted extensively from: The ruling class versus the country class. That would be us. And, you know, thanks to the Drive-Bys, things are the reverse of what everybody thinks is the case. Remember in the Bush years, things were doing absolutely great. There was a legitimate and real economic recovery coming out of 9/11 and a recession.

And the news media for five years spent every day telling people that a recession was coming. It was right around the corner, the beginnings of it, and they made people believe it. They made people believe there was a recession, and they made people start behaving as though there was one. So now things are the reverse of when we were told that we were suffering under Bush, and everybody thought it must be somebody else. You’d go into a neighborhood and say, “How are you doing?”

“I’m doing fine, I’m doing great, but I look in the news and I see a lot of people unemployed and losing their business. Yeah, I feel bad about it, but I’m doing fine.” Now, they go in the neighborhood. “How you doing?” “Gosh, I can’t find a job, I’m doing horribly out there, but I look at the news, and seven million people found a job, so my time’s coming. I’m feeling good. Country’s coming back.”

That’s how the low-information people are gonna hear it, Snerdley. They’re gonna hear positive news, they’re gonna assume it’s positive for everybody else except them, but their time is coming we’ll see. (interruption) Well, if you disagree with that, I want you to show me the evidence of where there is any national clamor for there to be a change of what’s happening in Washington, outside of the Tea Party. I want you to show me: Where is the low-information uprising?

Where is the low-information voter nationally clamoring for change? There is not any. It’s just the exact opposite — and again, the numbers are what they are. The income gap between rich and poor is the widest ever, the employment and wealth gap. Two things. The employment gap between rich and poor, widest on record. The wealth gap between rich and poor, widest on record. Again, under a Democrat regime.

These people spend their time talking about reducing income gap and that wealth gap, how unfair it is. But the truth of any liberal, quasi-socialist regime is being borne out here. They always do well for themselves. They do extravagantly well for themselves, and they get away with making everybody think that they care about them as well. So it’s gonna be a tough week, folks, attitudinally. It’s gonna be a tough week psychologically.

Because the pressure is being brought to bear on anybody who opposes this myth that there is an economic recovery, the myth that Obama’s policies have brought us to a new economic reawakening, a burgeoning reawakening. “Why, we on the verge here of economic progress the likes of which we’ve never seen!” That’s what this week is gonna tell us. “We beat back the Syrian bad guys. We stopped the spread of chemical weapons.

“We’re ready to take it to the Iranians. It’s a miracle, all of the wonderful, great things we’re doing,” and anybody who opposes it and anybody who says it isn’t happening — anybody who disagrees with it — is going to be targeted for some kind of attack that is designed to discredit them, impugn them, or worse.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here’s Obama in Washington, at the White House, speaking about the five-year anniversary of the financial crisis.

OBAMA: By the time I took office, the economy was shrinking by an annual rate of more than 8%. Our businesses were shedding 800,000 jobs each month. It was a perfect storm that would rob millions of jobs and homes and savings that they had worked a lifetime to build.

RUSH: So this is the setup, see? This is how it all happens. They set the table for how bad it was — so bad, that nothing was gonna work very soon. It was worse than we even knew! Now, I don’t know about the economy shrinking by an annual rate of more than 8%. Folks, we wouldn’t be talking recession if that were happening. If that had been happening, there’s no way. An annual rate of more than 8%?

My gosh, we’da had soup lines. There’s just no way. I mean, we’re celebrating economic growth of 1.5% a year now. They’re out there celebrating it! There’s no way. Those 800,000 jobs every month? No. Try six to 700,000, and you know when it began? Those numbers began in November of 2008, after the confluence of financial crisis bailout and Obama’s election. It was 700,000 jobs a month. People were being let go.

This financial crisis, remember what that was. That was the subprime mortgage crisis final come home to roost. It was the idea of giving people mortgages who couldn’t pay it back and weren’t paying it back, not being foreclosed on, keeping their homes. The mortgages were sold and sold and sold to unsuspecting buyers who had no idea they were worthless, until there was nobody left to buy ’em — and then that’s when the collapse happened.

All these created products were to convince people they were buying something with value when it wasn’t of any value. Finally they ran out of saps to sell it to. Hello, financial crisis. But people didn’t start losing their homes and their savings and all that until this guy took office. Robustly. That’s the thing that continues to amaze all of us, is how any accountability for that has been escaped, although it’s now been explained, the Limbaugh Theorem. Here is the next bite.

This where Obama says he’s fixed all that.

OBAMA: Over the last 3-1/2 years, our businesses have added 7-1/2 million new jobs. The unemployment rate has come down, our housing market is healing, our financial system is safer. Health care costs are growing at the slowest rate in 50 years, and just two weeks from now, millions of Americans who’ve been locked out of buying health insurance just because they had a preexisting condition, just because they’ve been sick or they couldn’t afford it, they’re finally gonna have a chance to buy quality, affordable health care on the private marketplace. What all this means is we’ve cleared away the rubble from the financial crisis and we’ve begun to lay a new foundation for economic growth and prosperity.

RUSH: See how easy this is?

You just go out and say it.

They’re just make this stuff up. People are losing their jobs today because of Obamacare! The high-risk pools, that’s the preexisting-condition insurance. They’re called high-risk pools that people sign up for. Nobody signed up for ’em! Everybody in the regime is still stunned and amazed that people haven’t signed up for the high-risk pool. That’s what preexisting-condition insurance is being called in the vernacular of Obamacare.

So now, folks, see? We’re starting to rebound now, and the financial system is safer, and people are getting jobs, and the unemployment rate’s coming down. You know what a myth that is? But he’s out saying it. So now if you’re not part of this, if you’re left out of this, you think, “Well, everybody else is doing okay. That’s cool. My time is coming. It’s only a matter of time for me now — and if I’m time isn’t coming, I’ve got all kinds of government help.”

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Okay, so it started out really bad when Obama took office: 800,000 jobs a month were being lost, the economy was shrinking by 8%, homes were being lost, jobs were being lost, savings were being lost. But now it’s fixed, and the only problem we have left is the Republican Congress.

OBAMA: The top 1% of Americans took home 20% of the nation’s income last year while the average worker isn’t seeing a raise at all. In fact, that understates the problem. Most of the gains have gone to the top one-tenth of 1%. So in many ways the trends that have taken hold over the past few decades of a winner-take-all economy where a few do better and better and better while everybody else just treads water or loses ground, that’s what we should be focused on. That’s what I’m focused on.

RUSH: All right. Now, this is really… For me, this is really troubling, the level of deceit here, and what he is signaling that is our future. The top 1% of Americans took home 20% of the nation’s income last year, and they’ve been doing it on his watch. By the way, he’s been president. We’re coming up on five years now, and his policies all of these five years have been designed to reduce this gap, all this talk that he’s engaged in about “growing the middle class.”

Of course none of it’s hands.

None of it was going to happen. Because of his policies, it can’t happen. What has happened is that his rich donors on Wall Street and Hollywood, they are getting the QE3 money. That’s why the top 1% is getting wealthier. There are six counties where the median income, family income is over a hundred grand a year. The median income throughout the country is $51,000, median family income.

There are six counties where the median family income is twice that, and four of those counties are suburban Washington. One’s in New Mexico and one’s in New Jersey. This income gap between the rich and poor is widening. If the Federal Reserve is printing $85 billion a month and it’s going to buy stocks, who’s on getting the money? This is after a bunch of income tax increases, too! I mean, Barack Obama is seeing to it that the rich are the ones getting rich.

They’re his donors, his buddies, and he’s gonna be one of them when he leaves office. This is all about making more and more people more and more dependent on Washington every day. That’s what amnesty’s about. It’s what his policies are all about. But this: “The top 1% of Americans took home 20% of the nation’s income last year while the average worker isn’t seeing a raise at all.” How come what you’re doing isn’t working?

Nobody’s gonna ask him that. So when he says the rich are doing better and better, and everybody else just treads water and loses ground, that’s where we should be focused on. So what he’s going to do is, he’s going to come back and demand even more taxes on the rich. Not “the wealthy,” the rich. They’re small business owners. There’s a big difference. The people getting this QE3, QE4, whatever it is, the money being printed, that’s not who we’re talking about with rich.

We’re not talking about Bill Gates and Warren Buffett and these people getting a tax increase. People at $250,000 a year are getting a tax increase. That’s what the rich are in Obamaville. The income disparity, this lack of fairness is going to be the impetus behind higher and higher taxes on the rich. That’s what this is all setting up. Because the rest of the country is working now. We’ve got it fixed. Everything is good now!

Health care’s cheaper, jobs are being created, and economy’s growing, and financial markets are safe now. The only problem is those damn rich people are too rich, and the Republicans in Congress that represent ’em. So that’s all we gotta do — and when we do that, then we’ve fixed everything fundamentally wrong with this country. “A new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll reveals Americans are unconvinced that Obamacare will improve the country’s health care system,” and check this number:

“Only 12% say the law will have a positive effect on their family and even the uninsured are skeptical Obamacare will do them any good. … Even worse, only 23% of all respondents say the law will benefit the healthcare system and paltry 12% believe the law will have a positive impact on their family.” So while Obama’s up there celebrating his great economic recovery policies, in the real world, only 12% of the people of this country think Obamacare’s gonna do them any good.

We already know this. We know exactly what Obamacare is going to do to people, and the regime can engage in all the PR and all the presidential speeches they want; it isn’t going to change what people really think. The remaining mystery is where is the Republican Party on this. By simple math you could concluded here that (let’s just round it up) 75% of the American people oppose Obamacare.

Why doesn’t the Republican Party in Washington want to try to connect with those people and establish a relationship, a political relationship with them as a party that represents their interests and their desires? Why does that not happen? We may have a partial answer when we learn that Republican congressional staffers don’t want any changes in Obamacare because theirs is going to be subsidized, like all the Democrat congressional staffers’ health care will be subsidized.