Rush Limbaugh Sums It Up

I'm posting some of the transcript from the Rush Limbaugh program. One of the reasons I'm doing this is because I agree with him. Another reason I'm doing it is because I disagree so heartily with many of my acquaintances and the political opinions they've been advertising. I personally don't like to read about other people's political opinions, especially when they differ from my own, especially when we're friends otherwise. So please disregard this if you know me and you think my opinions suck. I probably think yours suck too, but we get along in other ways, and that's good, viva la difference, right?

Yes, I believe in capitalism. Right now in my life I'm probably lower middle class. At some points in my life I could have used some free food, I could have taken the handouts the government offers, qualified for food stamps and other crap like that. But I don't plan to be lower middle class for the rest of my life, and if you're reading this and you disagree with my opinions, then you probably plan on being middle class for the rest of your life, and if you're already rich and disagree with me, well then you probably have a lot of guilt about your money. I'm just guessing here.

The good thing about capitalism is that it rewards ingenuity, it rewards hard work. Socialism and communism dampen the spirit, and if you don't believe ME, please believe Solzhenitsyn (read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich). Why strive for anything if you will always only get the same as your neighbor who sits around all day watching TV? I hope to become more than what I am today, not just in terms of material wealth, but in terms of enriching my mind. That, I believe, is more possible in a world where people believe they can have more if they work hard. We are headed quickly toward a system where hard work and ingenuity are punished rather than rewarded.

Anyway, the point is, my blood has been boiling for quite some time over this stimulus plan. I disagreed with the first stimulus plan, I disagreed with the government meddling with the market and I'm quietly fuming about this other stimulus. I won't go any further on the subject, I'll just post some of Limbaugh's words because he articulates it better than I do. Here's the link to the full transcript (Rush discusses Rick Santelli, whose videos I have posted below).

RUSH: My staff, my loyal staff member, trusted aide-de-camp, H.R. shouting in my ear, and I know what the shouting was about. Here you have this guy Rick Santelli, and Rick Santelli is boiling over like other average Americans at being told he's done something wrong by succeeding and these guys on the Chicago Mercantile Board, they're being told they've done something wrong and they're going to have sacrifice, and they're going to have to pay for people who now we are told bought their houses they couldn't afford because they were told it was the patriotic thing to do. That is absolute chump BS. That's the first I've heard it. We've got members of the media acting as enforcers for the Obama administration, harassing Rick Santelli, a colleague of theirs who dared speak out against The Messiah so he's gotta be forced to bend over. We've already stimulated the economy, starting a year ago, $180 billion or $200 billion, the checks that you got for $600 or whatever. We're up to $1.7 trillion in stimulus. My friends, if this was the way to stimulate and grow an economy, we'd see signs. We see the opposite. We see economic decline.

So the question, what's going to fix this? It's the wrong question. Because the question assumes that there is a mechanism, something somebody can do to take us back to 13,000 at the Dow, to take all of your home value you've lost and restore it, that your 401(k) is going to be replenished. Folks, there is nothing. There is no single thing any magician can do to make that happen, because what has happened has taken place as a result of tampering with the market. Now, the market also makes mistakes in addition to people tampering with it. If left alone, it's almost impossible for economies to go into recession. So what screwed up the market? Let's not forget this. What screwed up the market was not a bunch of people being told there's bucket loads of money inside that bank, it's a patriotic duty for you to own a house you can't afford, go in there and get it. What happened was that a bunch of liberal Democrats decided the impoverished in this country have been taking it on the chin for too long it's not fair that they don't have homes. And since those people know that the poor and impoverished can't afford homes, we're going to find a way to make 'em be able to be in homes, and the people paying for it are not going to know they're paying for it.

So it's hello Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and it's hello subprime mortgage market, called the Community Reinvestment Act or what have you, started by Carter and then Clinton comes along, and Janet Reno and the AG and Jamie Gorelick and all these people at Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, they were telling people, these lenders, if you don't lend this money, we're going to investigate you. The government is the essential market tamperer here. Everybody is blaming the speculators and so forth, there may be a lot of people to blame here, but the focal point of blame should be aimed at Barney Frank, at Christopher Dodd, at any Democrat member of Congress who resisted efforts to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The SEC, which was not regulating what the banks were doing to try to give value to these worthless mortgages that we're now being told are patriotic. The insults to our intelligence just add up every day. Every day we're here we have our intelligence insulted by the toxicity in the Drive-By Media.

We have a toxic disease in this country, and it's the media. We've got toxic assets as a result of the government tampering in the mortgage business. We've got debt out the wazoo. We have people who lived lives of substance when there was no "there" there and they wanted to keep up with the Joneses. Nobody's innocent here, except those of you who have no clue any of this was going on, you're playing by the rules, you're going to your lender, you're getting your mortgage, you don't know it's being packaged and sold at Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, you don't know that it's being used to subsidize people that can't pay, and now all of a sudden, you're being told for things you had nothing to do with that you are the ones getting punished, that you have to pay for these people who couldn't pay in the first place, 'cause it's just too tragic. And now they're saying, what happens if that home next to you is in foreclosure? What happens to the value of your house? The answer is what the hell have you done to the value of my house already without these foreclosures? And, by the way, a foreclosed house -- this is the market speaking -- is a hell of a buy opportunity.

Do you know the California first-time buyer market is up 85% on sales of the purchase of foreclosed houses 'cause you can get in them much cheaper than you ever could, starter houses, first time buyers. Just get out of the way, the market will work. We are the market. The government tampers with the market. The government sucks things out of the market in the form of taxation, deficit spending, and now the government's in the business of laughing at the free market. The government is an albatross on the market. If left alone, we adapt, we respond to all kinds of market conditions, including artificially low interest rates created by the Fed which helped create the boom Brian Williams and Lauer don't talk about. Poor people respond to government policies pushed by leftists that make loans available to them to buy homes they can't afford. The market didn't create these conditions. The market is responding to them. The market's responding by short selling the stimulus. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is down 53 right now. It's been down as much as 200 today.

The investors, the people who are the real poll on the state of the economy are not investing. They are betting on the market continuing to go south. They're taking their money out of it in general. Some stocks are doing better than others. But the overall DJI is down, and it's been down over 2,000 points since Obama was immaculated. Well, since he was elected. From November 4th through February 12th the market has plunged more than it plunged in September and October under Bush. You don't know that because it's not being told to you because of the toxicity in our system that is the Drive-By Media and it's poor excuse for journalists and reporters. So we're trying to adapt to it, everybody's trying to react to the market. You heard Dave LaRoe call from his little restaurant in Grand Rapids, Ohio. He's watching Oprah and Suze Orman tell people not to go out to eat. He adapts, he calls here. He does something. He's gotta counter all of this negative attention being focused on the private sector. But there's not a fix.

Folks, Obama doesn't have it, God doesn't have it. Biden doesn't have it. Reid doesn't have it, Pelosi doesn't have it, Barney Frank doesn't have it. There is nothing that is going to come along tomorrow and restore the value of your house, replenish your 401(k) and your kids' college fund, take the Dow back to 13 on the way to 15; it isn't there. It could be again, but not with the leadership we have now. The leadership we have now is continuing to stand idly by while the market continues to plunge, unemployment continues to rise, they're spending money hand in fist claiming it's going to stimulate the economy, $1.7 trillion, that should be some stimulus. There ought to be some new jobs out there. There ought to be some positive attitude. There ought to be somebody that's feeling good, willing to invest in this economy. So far, we don't see it. We see Obama promising it, but we don't see it. If all this stimulus that we've already done is so magical that it's going to start the immediate uptick of the economy, somebody tell me when.

Keynesian stimulus packages have been shown to fail each and every time they've tried and yet here we are again, and it's not because the people think it's gonna work. Not as you would define. Working for you is the value of your house comes back, your risk of losing your job declines, your 401(k) is replenished, that's success to you. That's a plan working for you. To the Obama administration, the plan working is exactly what we're getting. The market spiraling out of control, no end in site, unemployment going up, and Obama telling us it's gonna get worse before it gets better. That's chaos. The more chaos, the more you will accept whatever your government tells you is the next fix, and then when anybody steps outta line, like poor old Rick Santelli, the agents of toxicity representing the Obama administration in the media will make sure that he is discredited and laughed at and made a fool of as quickly as possible. That's what's happening. There is no fix. There never has been a fix. There is only corruption and what breaks. The market will come back if it's left alone, but the current crop doesn't trust the market, don't like the market, too much freedom for them in the market.