RUSH: Barack Obama today walked out again, the press corps duly stood up as he went out to the podium to do a third consecutive economic press conference. He announced his Economic Recovery Advisory Board and he named two people to it, Paul Volcker, who is 81 years old, and has served in two previous administrations. This is more of the ‘change’ that we can expect from Obama.
Also, Austan Goolsbee, who was the economic advisor during the campaign, is also part of the Economic Recovery Advisory Board. Now, Paul Volcker, 81, he came in under Carter. The media, however — knowing full-well how horribly he advised Carter — is spending all of their time associating Volcker with his tenure under Ronald Reagan in a tantamount admission that the economy under Ronald Reagan was something to be pointed to with fond remembrances and pride. But let’s not forget that Paul Volcker was the architect of the sky-high interest rates under the Carter administration that led to the misery index and Jimmy Carter saying the country was in a malaise. We have audio sound bites coming up of the press conference. Obama today finally got a question that was a tough question. He got a probing question, a challenging question unlike any question he has been asked in my memory during the campaign for a year-and-a-half, and he didn’t like it. The Messiah got very testy for a moment. It was asked by Ed Henry of CNN.
Now, when I watched it, I didn’t think it was Ed Henry. I mean, I looked at it, and I thought I’d never seen this reporter before. But my transcriber guys say that it was Ed Henry. If it’s Ed Henry, he’s finished at Obama press conferences. If it was Ed Henry, he’s grown a lot of hair, and they tell me it was Ed Henry, but I never saw him identified on TV. I never thought I saw this guy before. Let’s go right to the sound bites here. This is the question that got Obama all testy.
HENRY: Sir, you talked about John McCain was going to come back to Washington if he won and would just move people into different chairs. We got Tom Daschle, Hillary Clinton, Bob Gates —
OBAMA: Wait, wait, wait! Hold on! Ho’don! Wait a minute! Hold it. You hear that?
HENRY: We’re talking about Paul Volcker. He’s been around a long time, so he’s somebody who knows the ways of Washington. But what do you say, you know, to your supporters who were looking for change?
OBAMA: Actually Paul Volcker hasn’t been in Washington for quite some time. Uhhh, and that’s part of the reason he can provide a fresh perspective. Austan Goolsbee, uh, from my understanding, you’ve never worked in Washington.
GOOLSBEE: Been on vacation.
OBAMA: This is about as fresh a face as you can get.
RUSH: So you see, that’s not the topic, you can’t ask me about that. That’s not the topic. This isn’t Open Line Friday. This is not the Rush Limbaugh show where you get to ask the host anything you want. You’re going to stay on topic or you’re never going to get back in here wait, wait, wait, wait, wait hold on hold on hold on hold on wait, wait, wait, you hear that? See, he was looking for sympathy from others in the press corps. You hear that? You hear his question? You hear how unfair this is? First of all, that’s not the topic; we’re not talking about the cabinet. So Volcker, who is 81 years old, is now a fresh face. Volcker looks like a bald eagle. Nothing wrong with looking like a bald eagle, except when you’re not a bald eagle. He was standing there. He sent Volcker and Goolsbee out there to have their hands in their pockets for about five or ten minutes before The Messiah walked out from behind the curtain or behind the stage. They are clearly props. In the next sound bite, Obama rehashes his last two days of press conferences.
OBAMA: With respect to the details of the economic plan, as I’ve said before, we are going to be working over the next several months to put those details together. I’ve just described for you the framework within which we are going to put that, uh, that legislation forward. We’re going to have a strong stimulus, uh, a (sic) economic recovery plan that is designed to put people back to work. That’s priority number one. It is going to be large enough to jump-start the economy. That was what I talked about on Monday.
RUSH: Now, a couple observations. Look, I’m not trying to nitpick, but I need to set this up because of the bite that’s coming next. This sound bite and throughout this whole press conference, other than when he lost his cool with whoever this reporter was, ‘That’s not the topic! Not the topic! We’re not talking about my cabinet.’ And eventually he did go — let me see if we have that bite. Yeah, I think we’ve got the bite. I just got this and I haven’t had a chance to read the transcript, but he did go on and answer the question, and it was lame. It was a lame answer. He said, ‘How can you expect me to have new faces? I mean all these people are from the last Democrat administration, that happens to be the Clinton administration. I have to get people in here who know what they’re doing.’ So he really fumbled the answer, and I’m being told it is Ed Henry. Ed went in there in a disguise, I guarantee you, because he wants to be let back in.
At any rate, he botched the answer to the question. He was asked about Daschle and all these other people, but we’ll get to that here in just a second. This answer that you just heard is Obama sounding like he’s in charge. And if you didn’t know anything, if you just landed from Mars and you were told this is the country’s next president, and you hear him say with confidence and vigor, ‘I just described for you the framework within which we’re going to put that legislation forward. We’re going to have a strong stimulus, economic recovery plan designed to put people back to work! That’s priority number one. It’s going to be large enough to jump-start the economy. That was what I talked about on Monday.’ He sounds totally confident, totally in charge and if you happen to be an Obama supporter or neophyte — hard to tell the difference — listening to this, then you’d be inspired: ‘Okay, here’s somebody in charge, and he’s going to fix it. He’s going to get my job back and so forth.’ Then here’s the next bite.
OBAMA: On Tuesday I talked about the fact that we are going to have to pare back on programs that do not work, and I, uh, I think would hardly be expected to provide you a detailed list now. That’s why I have Peter Orszag, our budget director who is going to be going through that budget page by page, line by line. And the expectation is that we will identify those programs that are not working, make sure that those are eliminated and put money into programs that do work around things like health care modernization, making sure that we’ve got the first class schools that our kids need in order to compete in the Twenty-First Century, start putting a down payment on a new energy economy.
RUSH: So the first answer was: ‘I’m in charge! I’m going to get your job back. We’re going to put people back to work. That’s priority number one.’ Then the second answer is: Here comes the giant expansion of government. So nothing has changed here, but if you just listen to the second bite with no knowledge of this guy, you would think, ‘Wow, this is going to be pretty good. Here’s a guy finally in charge. He understands he needs to put people back to work. We’ve got people working on a recovery plan that’s designed to do just that. That’s priority number one.’ But then the next answer betrays who he really is and what his economic theory is, which is basically collectivism and the expansion of government, the notion that government can best jump-start the economy as opposed to people who make the country work. This has never worked before, and they’re still going to try it, because it’s all about cementing and ensuring their power for at least ten years. Then Obama said this about his team.
OBAMA: When it comes to the people that we’ve pulled together — because I know this has been sort of conventional wisdom floating around Washington, uh, that, well, you know, there’s a recycling of, uh, people who were in the Clinton administration, although Paul dates before that —
RUSH: Listen, now.
OBAMA: — the last Democratic administration that we had was the Clinton administration.
RUSH: Yeah?
OBAMA: And so it would be surprising if I selected a Treasury secretary who had had no connection with the last Democratic administration because that would mean that the person had no experience in Washington whatsoever.
RUSH: What?
OBAMA: And I suspect that you would be troubled and the American people would be troubled if I selected a Treasury secretary or a chairman of the National Economic Council at one of the most critical economic times in our history who had no experience in government whatsoever.
RUSH: Now, this is awfully sly, but how many hundreds of thousands of people are there in government that he could have chosen that are brainiacs that might have some decent ideas that have no ties to the Clinton administration? They’re all over the place. This answer is so lame. ‘Where else am I going to get my staff. I’ve gotta raid the only Democrat administration we’ve had in the last 20 years, where am I going to get my staff?’ Then there’s this, and this is even better. This is even more telling, because here Obama tells us what his role in all this is going to be.
OBAMA: What we are going to do is combine experience with fresh thinking.
RUSH: Yeah?
OBAMA: But I understand where the — the vision for change comes from first and foremost. It comes from ME. That’s my job, is to provide a vision in terms of where we are going and to make sure then that my team is implementing it. I think when you ultimately look at what this advisory board looks like you’ll say this is a cross section of opinion, uh, that in some ways, uh, reinforces conventional wisdom, in some ways breaks it orthodoxy in all sorts of ways, and that’s the kind of discussion that we’re going to want. We want ideas from everybody. What I don’t want to do is to somehow, uh, suggest that because you served in the last Democratic administration, that you’re somehow, uh, barred from serving, uh, again, because we need people who are going to be able to hit the ground running.
RUSH: All right, so he finally gets a tough question, and he’s flailing around. If you listen to his answer, he’s flailing around all over the place. He sounds confident and in charge, though. But he’s flailing around. ‘Look, I understand where this vision for change comes from. It comes from me. That’s my job, to provide a vision.’ So he’s planning on being a figurehead. He’s going to sit there in the Oval Office; he’s going to tell this team his vision; they’re going to go out and act on his vision. I thought yesterday he said that these are the people that are going to come up with all the ideas and he’s going to have competing ideas among these various groups of advisories and they’re all going to come together and make a decision on what ought to happen. The way he answers this question, he doesn’t need a team, he doesn’t need competing ideas. All he needs is a bunch of lackeys ’cause he’s going to be sitting there providing the vision and he’s going to tell ’em what he saw and then they’re supposed to go out and implement it.
Look, he’s going to be more than a figurehead, but ‘my job’s to provide the vision’? That’s strangely like CEO talk. It is strangely like CEO talk, and of course he wants all CEOs to forgo their bonuses this year. We have that coming up as well. But Obama repeated during the campaign constantly over and over that putting the same old Washington people in the same jobs and expecting different results is not going to provide meaningful change. Amen, bro! You have just said that everything you talked about with change, at least as people understood it, is off the board now. And the real change is going to be a full speed ahead approach to trying to expand the government as large and as quickly as possible.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I want to go back to this answer that Obama gave. I’m not going to play number one again. We’ll do that one later. I want to stick to the substance here. Obama was finally asked a tough question today at his press conference. He did not like it. He intimidated the reporter, ‘That’s not the topic! Wait, wait, wait! That’s not the topic.’ He was asking about the appointment of all these Clinton people in the cabinet. So here are two sound bites, just to repeat this because there’s some things I want to add in addition to my already salient and brilliant analysis up to this point.
OBAMA: When it comes to the people that we’ve pulled together —
RUSH: He’s gotta stop the stuttering, too, or it’s going to drive me nuts.
OBAMA: — floating around Washington that, well, you know, there’s a recycling of, uh, people who were in the Clinton administration —
RUSH: Yeah?
OBAMA: — although Paul dates before that. The last Democratic administration that we had was the Clinton administration.
RUSH: So?
OBAMA: And so it would be surprising if I selected a Treasury secretary who had had no connection with the last Democratic administration because that would mean that the person had no experience in Washington whatsoever.
RUSH: What?
OBAMA: And I suspect that you would be troubled and the American people would be troubled if I selected a Treasury secretary or a chairman of the National Economic Council at one of the most critical economic times in our history who had no experience in government whatsoever.
RUSH: That’s what you said you were going to do, though! That’s the impression you left with all of these neophyte people that voted for you. They were going to get rid of the usual human debris that populates a bureaucracy, going to bring in some fresh faces just like you — ahem — and that they’re going to have all these brilliant new ideas. It is a recycling! Here’s the next bite.
OBAMA: What we are going to do is combine experience with fresh thinking.
RUSH: Oh.
OBAMA: Understand where —
RUSH: Yeah.
OBAMA: — the — the vision for change comes from first and foremost.
RUSH: Where?
OBAMA: It comes from ME.
RUSH: Oh.
OBAMA: That’s my job is to provide a vision in terms of where we are going and to make sure, then, that my team is implemented.
RUSH: All right, cut it. Cut it. That’s not what he’s been saying the past two days. He has been giving his team assignments to come back with solutions. He today is saying that this team is going to listen to his vision, and they’re going to go out and implement his vision. But the past two days he’s been saying he’s gonna wait to see what they recommend. What this all means is Obama just made the case why Hillary Clinton should be president. That is what this means, my good friends. He is picking the Clinton team because they have experience and he doesn’t. He is admitting that his lack of experience can only be balanced by people who have experience. He’s obviously not going to choose Republicans, so where else is he going to go? He’s gotta go to Democrats who are most recently there. That means he’s re-impaneling in large part the Clinton economic team, the Clinton cabinet — and he wants a ‘cross section of opinion.’
Okay, here’s the cross section. The cross section of opinion that Obama has assembled ranges from liberal to very liberal. The cross section of opinion does not include very liberal, liberal, moderate, conservative. It’s a very narrow range of opinion, this cross section. Folks, I’m not trying to be I-told-you-so here, but you gotta hammer it home when you have the opportunity to hammer it home. It proves everything that we have been saying about Obama. Zero experience, left-wing ideologue. So he appoints people who will implement his left-wing ideology, which is, quote, unquote, his ‘vision.’
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: This is Mike in Indianapolis. Welcome, sir, to the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Good afternoon, Mr. Limbaugh. This is Mike from the Heartland. My feline friend here, Melchior, passes on Thanksgiving wishes to your feline friend, Punkin.
RUSH: (laughing) Thank you, sir.
CALLER: And my comment has to do with Paul Volcker, who during the standing as sort of an awesome presence behind Barack’s entire campaign I was concerned and told people that here’s a Republican who turned coat but had actually turned coat even before that. He was the one who headed up the investigation of food-for-oil scandal in the United Nations and ended up giving Kofi Annan and his son a buy on the whole deal. And this was because at the same time that this scandal was going on of course the Germans and the French were using the embargo as a front —
RUSH: You know, I had forgotten that part of Volcker’s resume. You’re right. He did do the investigation, the oil-for-food program of the UN and basically gave the two head honchos, Kofi Annan and his son. What was his son’s name, Kofu? What was his son, Kofi Annan and — oh, and then Kofi threw the kid under the bus —
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: — a couple times or threw him overboard, but they both got wrist slaps by Paul Volcker.
CALLER: Right. And Kofi, of course, is messing around down there in Zimbabwe with Jimmy Carter, been denied admission to go there and stir up trouble when actually what they could do is get something done with arms coming out of South Africa.
RUSH: You’re not showing the proper amount of respect here. Obama said today this is a fresh face, that Volcker hadn’t been around Washington since the eighties.
CALLER: Fresh face. (laughing) You’re speaking euphemistically, right?
RUSH: Yes, he’s trying to make people think that Volcker’s been running around chewing his cud for the last 26 years and has now been called out of retirement because challenges are so important and so great that this is the only guy that can handle it along with Austan Goolsbee.
CALLER: Yeah. Well, you watch and see what other fresh faces is named to his cabinet.
RUSH: Look, Obama’s admitting to us he’s got no experience. He’s admitting to us he doesn’t have any idea here. He’s admitting to us that he’s going to be a figurehead. It’s his vision. Now, I’m not trying to diminish his power or influence here because I think he is a committed leftist and I think he’s going to do everything he can to advance that kind of an agenda, but when it comes specifically to executive experience, Obama is telling us he hasn’t got any — which we all pointed out during the campaign. All right, look, I appreciate the phone call, Mike.