RUSH: To Vancouver, this is Doug. Nice to have you with us, sir. Welcome.
CALLER: I’m pleased to talk with you, Rush. Long-time listener, first-time caller. My brother Dean in Minnesota actually introduced me to your show a few years ago, but anyway straight to the point. You mentioned earlier about the Drive-By Media and the doom and gloom of the Dow hitting 13,000? Well, I’ll tell you what. Last night I was watching Brian Williams. I don’t remember which network he’s on, but —
RUSH: Wait, wait, wait, wait. Now, that’s not true.
CALLER: (Laughing.) That was a joke, Rush.
RUSH: It’s NBC.
CALLER: (Laughing.) Okay. But anyway, they’re doing this story about how capitalism is flourishing in Russia, and people are, instead of standing in bread lines, they’re buying cars, and instead of standing in bread lines they’re going to coffee shops.
RUSH: They’re also being murdered if they criticize Putin.
CALLER: Well, yeah, and all they could do was talk about — they interview this liberal that’s talking about — how bad it is that everybody’s not sharing in this. In the meantime, the economy is just roaring. They can see gloom and doom in everything, even the fall of communism and the rise of capitalism! I was just dumbfounded to sit there and listen to them describe how bad it is that people are buying new cars.
RUSH: You have to understand the context in which Drive-Bys report this stuff. They’re not excited about the fact that capitalism is succeeding in Russia. When that news is received by the editors in the newsroom, that’s, ‘Wow, capitalism is working! Wow, we got to report this!’ That’s not it. You have to understand: going back 50 years, Drive-Bys, little Democrats (liberals, period), have always admired the Soviet Union, particularly when it was a communist nation. They really loved it then. They’ve always had a soft spot in their heart that Russia coulda, shoulda been something. ‘If they’d just had more time, that communist nation could have revolutionized the entire world and showed us all how to do it,’ and now Russia is coming back? It’s a way of pointing out how great Russia is doing against how rotten the middle class in America is.
We’ve crossed the 13,000 number at the Dow industrials. The Drive-Bys are not reporting this. I will guarantee you, if Algore or John Kerry were president, and this were happening, this would be all that would be on the news today. ‘The Dow Jones Industrial Average is over 13,000! It’s setting records,’ and so forth. But today, in the New York Times and other places, we’ve got stories on the squeeze that’s occurring to people in the middle class, the inequities, the wage gaps, the unhappiness, the fear over the loss of jobs, the fact that we’re just one paycheck away from being homeless. So many Americans are being left out! Wall Street may be doing well, but Main Street is in the toilet, and it’s a problem, and what are we going to do?
Everything in America has to be chaotic. There has to be tumult. There cannot be happiness or contentment. So the good news here on Wall Street (if it’s not being ignored, which it is for the most part) will be reported as a class thing. ‘The rich are getting richer. The middle class is getting squeezed! They’re being stolen from,’ and so forth and so on. But, you know, don’t worry about this because like the headline I saw this morning, ‘Strong corporate profits boost Dow Jones industrials over 13,000 points for the first time,’ but have no fear, folks, the Democrats have every intention of changing that in 2008 when they get elected. They’re not going to stand for this! The Dow has to come down, and they’ll do it by raising taxes. They’ll impose nutty environmental wacko rules; they will investigate the companies for these ‘obscene profits’ that are being made, and they will drive down the economy — and they’ll blame Bush for it. Even now, the fact that Wall Street is over 13,000, but Main Street is… They probably don’t even have the numbers. It’s probably a minus number for Main Street in their mind. That will be Bush’s fault, too.
That will be portrayed as Bush’s fault for ‘the gross inequities’ and ‘the gaps between the haves and the have-nots,’ which is a fabricated story. It is not the case that the wage gap is widening, that the income gap, and that the gap between the wealthy and the poor is rising. It is not. These are contrived numbers. It depends on how you look at it, and they’ve found the way to look at it to make it happen. This shows how the media and the Democrats are one and the same and how they create or ignore or manipulate news. I’m just telling you, if there were a Democrat president right now and this were happening, this would be the greatest economy ‘since Clinton,’ and they’d be debating: ‘Is this economy better than the Clinton economy?’ Both would be great! Both economies would be the fabulous, greatest economies US has ever known. That would be the question. Now they’re doing their best to ignore it or to characterize it in a way that’s not realistic.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Jim in Asheville, North Carolina, hello, sir. Welcome to the EIB Network.
CALLER: Hey, Rush. What an honor. Mega dittos to the People’s Republic of Asheville.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: Hey, Rush. You had made a comment, and I just wanted to call in. The wage gap and —
RUSH: There is no wage gap. I love the wage gap! The wider, the better.
CALLER: I do, too. In fact, I don’t think the wage gap is wide enough, and I think the Senate and Congress should do something and address it, because, Rush, the closer that wage gap is, the less incentive people have to pull themselves up to the next level —
RUSH: Well, I agree, but —
CALLER: — whether that’s education —
RUSH: I need to explain what you mean. Folks, when he says if the wage gap narrows, what he means is they’re going to start taking money away from the wealthy — and in your view that’s going to eliminate a lot of people’s chance to get into that group of people. Once there’s no difference, there’s no incentive to move up. Everybody will be the same. That’s what you’re saying. It sort of defies human nature. There’s always going to be a group of people that will outperform others. No matter what rules and regulations and taxes there are, there will always be people that do that. They’re always going to be hated. They’re always going to be held up as targets. They’re always going to be accused by the liberals of stealing from the poor and the middle class and so forth, but you’re making a good point.
CALLER: Basically what they’re doing is taking away incentives and dreams. I just really would like to see the wage gap be correctly defined as the difference between ‘hard work and education’ and not having those two things in your résumé.
RUSH: Well, I agree with you. They are defined that way in a number of places, just not where you want to see it. Folks, it’s time for a reminder — and I don’t mean this to be a downer — but you want to see things and read things in the Drive-By Media that you’re not going to see or read there. Too many people are defining progress or success by defining how the Drive-By Media might be coming around. That’s not going to happen. They run on action lines and templates that are forged early in their lives as liberals. They go to journalism school; they’re cemented even further. They are who they are. They’re not to be persuaded so much as to be conquered. They are to be dwarfed, and that’s what this is all about. We’ve only been at this since 1988, and a tremendous amount of progress has been made since then. But they still have a whole lot of power. Not as much as they used to have.
It takes them a lot more time to effect and move public opinion than it used to, but they can still do it. On an economic story, any economic story with a Republican in the White House where the news is good, that’s not what you’re going to get. You’re going to get stories of misery. They’re gonna find people that are not doing well, that are miserable and unhappy and have been fired or laid off by some evil boss, and a company that may be just going gangbusters and through the roof but they don’t care about their employees. It’s written in stone. This is who they are and what’s going to happen. Ever since Bush was inaugurated back in 2001, the economy has been a story they’re not interested in unless they could pin the recession on Bush, unless they could pin two million jobs lost since Bush was inaugurated. That’s just who they are and that’s what they’re going to do and if you’re looking for that to change, you’re setting yourself up for perpetual disappointment.