RUSH: Now, we had the Maxine Waters sound bites, and she got permission from her constituents. So the Congressional Black Caucus now has the okay to go after Obama. This is a big thing. You know, unemployment in the black community is sky-high. Depending on the city, it’s in the twenties and thirties. And you can imagine, you hear these sound bites that we played from Detroit two years ago, what all these people thought was gonna happen, what they thought the election of the first black president was gonna mean to them personally, and it hasn’t happened. It hasn’t happened for anybody. Obama has not improved anybody’s life.

You know, there is a general malaise. I had dinner last night with a friend, used to live here, moved away, is moving back. I haven’t seen this guy in a long, long time. We went out
and had dinner last night, and we were talking about the fact that even people who are not destroyed financially and economically by this regime’s policies, even those who are working, doing okay, there’s a general sense of unhappiness and unease, as we all know, because of the future and what it holds and people who have lost their jobs, their prospects for finding a job are bleak. People who still have their jobs are worried how long are they gonna have their jobs if Obama kicks in, and if he wins reelection, what other damage is going to be done. So there’s a general sense of unease, and even unhappiness.

And what I have found — I don’t want to say heartwarming, that’s not the right word, but, folks, even people who are unaffected by this in meaningful ways, I mean everybody has lost — well, not everybody, some people have actually done well, GE, Jeff Immelt, but I mean people who are economically okay are still, some of them unhappy because of what’s happened to the rest of the country. There’s no — at least the people I run into — there’s no, “I don’t care, I’m doing okay. I don’t care what happens, it’s all gonna even out in the end. We’ll come back, country will come back.” That attitude’s not there. The attitude is, “Gee, what’s gonna reverse this slide?” And most of the people I know are conservatives, and as conservatives we want everybody to do well.

We want everybody to have that chance, or multiple chances at economic opportunity, educational opportunity. We want that for everybody. And when that opportunity is shrinking and unavailable, there aren’t a whole lot of people I know who are saying, “Well, I got mine, I don’t care, I’m happy.” They’re not. They don’t like seeing what’s happening to the country. They don’t like to see a leadership that appears to be, even though it isn’t, appears to be wandering cluelessly and aimlessly on a bus tour. There’s nothing clueless or aimless about this bunch. They are right on target.

My friend Norman Podhoretz had a piece recently I think in the Wall Street Journal, and he took a little issue with me, friendly, and Dr. Sowell and our assessments of Obama. You know, my assessment of Obama is that he’s doing all this on purpose to explicitly harm the country because, as I have said, I think he’s got grudges, grievances, things about the country he doesn’t like. Podhoretz disagrees, but it’s almost a distinction without a difference. He says Obama is who he is. In Norman’s view — I’m paraphrasing now, I don’t have his piece right in front of me — but in Norman Podhoretz’s view, Obama really thinks that he is in charge here to improve the country and to rescue it from its past sins and cleanse it and so forth.

The end result is the same. I guess it’s a distinction of differences with the motives applied, but there is no disagreement over what’s happening. And that is a purposeful transformation of a capitalist, market-based economy, rooted in liberty, private property rights and all that, to a centralized command-and-control authority running as much of human life in the country as possible on the basis that individuals are not capable of living life themselves in ways that would please arrogant elitists too stupid to make the right decision. So it’s gotta be done for them.

Regardless, whether there’s clueless aimless wandering through the wilderness here or whether this is an on target assault of the country, the fact of the matter is there is a dispiritedness among even the successful, among even those who are still employed or so far not totally negatively impacted by this, and there are some in the country that way. Some of the people I know in that circumstance, it’s not guilt that they feel, although it’s close. It’s sadness. It’s not, “Gee, I don’t like the fact that I’m doing well while other people are not.” It’s not that. It’s that we’re conservatives, we want everybody to do well, we want everybody to have a chance. We just cringe at this notion — you ought to hear the stories, folks, of employers who need jobs filled, so they have people come in, and the first thing they do is give them a job application form to fill out. He said it’s shocking the number of people who leave the office to fill it out, meaning they can’t read. They have diplomas, but they’re illiterate.

Now, how does that happen? How is that possible? How can you get out of high school not being able to read your diploma? And of course not be an athlete. That’s happened for decades. So they leave and have somebody else who can read and write fill it out and bring it back but they’re not getting away with it because people understand, if you can’t sit there and fill it out in front of me then you probably can’t read or write. People, what is happening to our country? What’s happening to the education system? Malaise, whatever you want to call it.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I mentioned Norman Podhoretz’s piece in the Wall Street Journal last hour, and I want to quote him specifically here. “I disagree with those of my fellow conservatives who maintain that Mr. Obama is indifferent to ‘the best interests of the United States’ (Thomas Sowell) and is ‘purposely’ out to harm America (Rush Limbaugh). In my opinion, he imagines that he is helping America to repent of its many sins and to become a different and better country.” So Podhoretz’s piece is entitled “What Happened to Obama? Absolutely Nothing.” He is who he is. So Norman Podhoretz, who is a brilliant man; it’s an insult to call him a writer; he crafts his pieces, says that Obama imagines he’s helping America to repent of its many sins and to become a different and better country.

In my mind, that’s a difference without much of a distinction. He thinks the country is still with sins, needs to become different and thus better. What are the sins? Capitalism,
wealth, who knows. But then Mr. Podhoretz says, “But I emphatically agree with Messrs. Limbaugh and Sowell about this president’s attitude toward America as it exists and as the Founding Fathers intended it. That is why my own answer to the question, ‘What Happened to Obama?’ is that nothing happened to him. He is still the same anti-American leftist he was before becoming our president, and it is this rather than inexperience or incompetence or weakness or stupidity that accounts for the richly deserved failure both at home and abroad of the policies stemming from that reprehensible cast of mind.” Norman Podhoretz, “What Happened to Obama? Absolutely Nothing.”

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Paula in Roanoke, Virginia, great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Hey, thanks, from Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.

RUSH: You bet.

CALLER: I wanted to thank you from the bottom of my heart for something you’ve helped me do for the last 50 of my 63 years. My parents have always been strong Minnesota Democrats.

RUSH: Right.

CALLER: They’re 85 and 90 years old. They are now telling me they will never vote Democratic again. They asked me what I thought about Obama. I said, “I think he’s a con artist,” and I said, “Remember, the Democrats are tax and spend party.” I said, “Why don’t you give Rush a listen,” and I took her a copy of your brother’s book, and they are now no longer Democrats.

RUSH: No kidding?

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: That is heartwarming news. I love stories like this, and stories like this really frighten DNC officials because they’ve tried to tell everybody that programs like this just preach to the choir, but there are a lot of converts. Do you get along with your parents better now as a result of this?

CALLER: Oh, not necessarily. I mean, there was no talking politics ever. Ever, ever, ever. If I brought something up, there was no discussing it. They didn’t want to talk about it. Now we talk about it all the time.

RUSH: Interesting. Well, I’m happy. I’m happy for the report, Paula. Thank you very much.

CALLER: You’re welcome. Thank you.

RUSH: You have a great one.