Obama on Edge as Magic Fades; DeMint Hits Nerve with "Waterloo"

RUSH: Now, look I understand it, folks, I totally understand it, but I gotta caution you again. I think people are way too giddy out there on this health care business. I think Obama's close to going over the edge. I hope nobody talks about his big ears within his earshot today, because this is a guy who grew up charmed, he grew up never laughed at, never teased, never kidded, and probably never criticized. He doesn't deal with this very well, and if somebody within his earshot today happens to talk about his big ears it could push him over the edge, so don't get, in our giddiness out there, thinking this health care thing is defeated, it isn't, he's gonna try to win over these Blue Dog Democrats, these so-called Blue Dog Democrats. I've seen these pictures the last couple days of Rahm Emanuel, and DeMint was right. This is Waterloo, if he loses this, and he knows it. Chuck Grassley has admitted that a Democrat member of Congress, senator or somewhat, quoting Obama as saying, "You can destroy my presidency." It is about him. Greetings, folks. Great to have you with us. Rush Limbaugh, the EIB Network, and the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies. Great to be with you. Our telephone number, 800-282-2882. The e-mail address, ElRushbo@eibnet.com.

All right, now, the president of the United States says, ladies and gentlemen, that they rescued the economy. The poll numbers are dropping here. There's an AP-GFK poll and it now shows that a majority of Americans are back to thinking that the country is headed in the wrong direction after a fleeting period in which more thought it was on the right track. The number of people who think Obama can improve the economy is down 19 percentage points from days just before his inauguration. Ditto for expectations about creating jobs. This is where the Waterloo is, not just in health care. Now, he's out there, the question was asked yesterday by a caller, and it is a great question to keep asking, "What has Obama done for you? What have the liberal Democrats done for you?"

They've been running the show since 2007 on Capitol Hill. Obama's been running the show with them since January of this year. What have they done for you? Another question, "What have they done to you?" They haven't done anything for anybody. They can say we rescued the economy as a means of saying, "Well, it would be much, much worse if we hadn't done what we have done." They haven't done anything. We just found out stimulus money is going to be used to put new energy efficient lights at the runways at the Raleigh-Durham airport. Stimulus money. It's going to cost either six or eight million. How long is it going to take to get the savings back, and this is part of the stimulus bill? It's absurd. He's not doing anything for anybody.

Now, let's get to health care because that's what the presidential press conference tonight is going to be about. I have a simple question. If health care is such a catastrophe in this country, if there is such a pressing, overwhelming need for reform, why didn't any of the $1 trillion in Porkulus money go to insuring those who don't have any insurance? Why didn't that happen? Now, I ran some numbers, and sometimes when I run numbers I'm off a little bit. So I ran these numbers backwards, forwards, upside down. By my calculation, you have 47 million uninsured people. Now, the assumption is that all of them really wish they had insurance. (crying) "I can't afford it, it's not fair." That's not true. Not all 47 million want health insurance. There was a guy at a town hall meeting yesterday in Maryland, we played the tape for you, he didn't want it, he likes having the money to spend on other things. Anyway, you could, for between 30 and $100 billion, you could buy a health insurance policy for a full year for every person who can't afford it. That's twelve million people, people that can't afford it -- of course it depends on the policy you look at -- between 29 billion and a hundred billion, that's a broad range, you could cover everybody for a year.

Now, we just spent a trillion dollars in Porkulus. Why didn't we do that if it's such a catastrophe? It's a drop in the bucket for what Obama is spending, not just on Porkulus but TARP, all the bailouts that we've had. It's a drop in the bucket. We don't need to spend a trillion dollars on health care to insure people. Nowhere near it. Why didn't the stimulus bill pay for health insurance for the downtrodden? Why not send billions to emergency rooms and hospitals who provide care for anybody who walks in? Why not do that? Why didn't Obama rescue the people without health insurance while he was rescuing the economy? We have a deficit we can't pay off; we have unemployment about to go double-digit; Obama wants to destroy the health insurance policies a huge majority of Americans have and like. He isn't rescuing anything. He's destroying it. And he's doing it on purpose. He doesn't give a damn about anybody but himself and his media. Destroying the American economy is not how anybody helps people and this health care debacle is an absolute debacle. It has no prayer of working and providing greater health care. BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Jim DeMint, a senator from South Carolina, has really, really hit pay dirt with his claim that this health care, if it's defeated, is Obama's Waterloo. What's interesting is Obama put his presidency on the line, and then he recoils when DeMint agrees with him. "What do you mean by that, Rush?" Okay. From the National Journal: "A telling episode recounted by Senate Finance ranking member Charles Grassley reveals the Obama administration might be more worried than they are letting on that a Republican senator's comparison of the healthcare overhaul to Waterloo might be dangerously close to the truth. Grassley said he spoke with a Democratic House member last week who shared Obama's bleak reaction during a private meeting to reports that some factions of House Democrats were lining up to stall or even take down the overhaul unless leaders made major changes.

"'Let's just lay everything on the table,' Grassley said. 'A Democrat congressman last week told me after a conversation with the president that the president had trouble in the House of Representatives, and it wasn't going to pass if there weren't some changes made ... and the president says, 'You're going to destroy my presidency.'" The president told a Democrat member of the house, "You're going to destroy my presidency." I thought it wasn't about him. I thought this wasn't about him. I thought this was about us! I thought this was about us and our precious health care. No, no, no, no! It's all about him. He's worried about his presidency being destroyed. So all DeMint did was say this could be his Waterloo. Obama agrees with him and recoils when DeMint says this. He can't handle criticism. He's never been criticized, substantively, I'll guarantee you.

I know these kind of people, folks. I've worked for them; I've been fired by them. They've never been criticized, never laughed at, never teased. Remember, Maureen Dowd made some comment about his elephant ears during the campaign, and he walked down off the stage and confronted her. He said, "I'm very, very sensitive about my ears," and she said, "We're just trying to toughen you up!" So I guarantee you there's instability over there in the White House. They've been coming unhinged because the magic that got him elected is gone. Can you imagine, folks...? Imagine if they'd have done health care first instead of Porkulus. They'd have gotten it. They would.

Nobody would dare stop the first thing he was going to do. He was in his honeymoon, the first black president, historical and all that. He was going to get that. He got that stimulus in two weeks. We better thank our lucky stars -- I never thought I would say this, but we better thank our lucky stars -- that they did stimulus first. 'Cause if they had done this first, it would be signed into law already. He woulda gotten it. I'll bet Rahm Emanuel is kicking himself and the furniture, stabbing steaks with a knife and sending dead fish to himself because he's all upset about the strategical blunder. Now they started with Porkulus and it ain't working! It's not doing anything for anybody, and the poll numbers are plummeting.

And because of that the health care problems in big trouble. Nothing this administration has done has fixed anything, and each and every day there's a greater realization of that fact by more and more people. So here are five questions that Jim DeMint would like the president to address tonight. Now, he will not be asked these questions, and if he does get some tough questions tonight (there's always the possibility that a renegade will get in there), he's going to start filibustering. He'll give a 10- to 12-minute answer to limit the number of questions, because he thinks he dazzles people with his command of the facts in 10- to 12-minute answers.

All right, here are five questions DeMint would like the president to answer: "1. If the major provisions of the health care bills will not kick in until 2013, four years from now, why the [hurry] to pass a thousand-page bill before the August recess, a bill you admit that you haven’t fully read yourself?

"2. You have said your health care bill will cut costs and not increase the deficit. But, independent analysis by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office contradicts both claims, saying it will raise costs and increase the deficit by $240 billion in the first ten years. What independent analysis will you provide that supports your claims and refutes CBO's?

"3. You have repeatedly said that your health care bill allows any American who likes their current employer-based plan to keep it. But the most comprehensive independent analysis available, by the Lewin Group, contradicts your claim and found your bill will force over 80 million Americans to lose their current coverage. Will you provide independent analysis to refute this study?" And Obama won't. He doesn't debate. He clears the field. He gets rid of opponents. He does not debate issues. He does not do that. He has his ideas -- and they are his, and they are right, and they're going to happen come hell or high water -- and we don't even have the right to disagree. We are being uppity if we disagree with this man's brilliance.

"4. Your own record in the Senate reveals you spent years voting against nearly every reform to make health care more affordable and accessible, but this week you said that opponents of your plan are 'content to perpetuate the status quo, [and] are, in fact, fighting reform on behalf of powerful special interests.' Which specific elected officials will you cite that have proposed to keep the status quo, and is that how you characterize the opposition of the 52 Blue Dog Democrats in the House...?

"5. Yes or no question: Will you guarantee pro-life Americans that, under your plan, they will not be forced to subsidize elective abortions?" Five questions for the president tonight. BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Jim DeMint destroyed Matt Lauer today on the Today Show. DeMint rendered Matt Lauer speechless on Obama's rush to have a government takeover of health care. In fact, you know, I was watching. I got in here today and I turned on the TVs -- well, they were already on -- and I look up at MSNBC, and I see that they've got the headline at the bottom of the screen: "Obama Rush..." I said, "Whoa, whoa, whoa! What did I miss?" and then I see they're just putting my name in there as a substitute for the word "hurry." "Obama Rush to Have a Government Takeover of Health Care." Question from Matt Lauer to Jim DeMint: "Are you rallying conservatives to the cause of health care reform, or are you rallying conservatives to the cause of breaking a president?"

DEMINT: We need to put the brakes on this president. He's been on a spending spree since he took office. His goal seems to be a government takeover, not making insurance more available. So I do think we need to stop the president on this. We need to stop his policy because if we allow him to continue to ram things through Congress before we even get a chance to read 'em... Matt, I just brought one of the bills this morning. I mean, if you look at this bill, it's one of the three bills that we're going to have to look at.

RUSH: Ah! It's a good question. Why do we have to pass it in two weeks, when it doesn't get implemented for four years? Why do we have to pass it in two weeks? By the way, I don't know if you saw this or not: "President Barack Obama's pledge to make sure health care legislation is fully paid for excludes $245 billion to raise fees for doctors treating Medicare patients, a senior administration official said Tuesday. Peter Orszag, the budget director, said the administration always had assumed the money would be spent to prevent a cut of more than 20 percent in doctor fees..." I'm not sure I understand this. Is this story saying they missed $245 billion in doctors fees? We know they're going to squeeze the doctors to try to cut costs, but how do you have this health care legislation and not cover payment to doctors? That could have been what... Maybe it can. Maybe. With this bunch you just don't know. All right, now, I want to comment on cut 12 again but I want to play cut 13 first. Jim DeMint and Matt Lauer, the second sound bite of their exchange on the Today Show today.

LAUER: The words you chose were very specific. "It could be his Waterloo. It could break this president." I guess the obvious question is: It wouldn't break your heart if you break this president, would it?

DEMINT: It's not personal, but we've got to stop his policies, Matt. The policies are not matching up to the promises. They're loading trillions of dollars of debt onto the American people -- and the thing is, we need to real health care reform.

RUSH: See, the Drive-Bys here are trying to make it out like DeMint, me, and everybody else want to destroy the president personally. Understand this. He's already failing. He is in the process of failing and failing big. He is failing the United States. He is failing our country. He is failing our economy. He, in his mind, is succeeding. This is what people still don't get. What's happened as a result of his policies is exactly what was intended. There is no sane person in the world who would implement policies like this if their objective was economic growth and prosperity. You would only do what they are doing and then double down on it if your intent is to remake it, destroy it, and put it back together in a way that we won't recognize. And that's what's going on. We've got to stop him, and what DeMint's saying. It doesn't matter who it is. This could be anyone.

Anastas Mikoyan could be president. Whoever is doing this, we've got to stop him. The Drive-Bys want to make this all personal. I'm going to tell you something. This health care deal is Obama's Waterloo. I think DeMint's right. I think the stimulus bill is his Waterloo, actually, and this is going to be Waterloo 2. But there's another Waterloo happening out there, and the Waterloo that's happening out there is the mainstream media. The mainstream media has met their Waterloo, and their Waterloo is Obama. They are giving up every ounce of integrity and character they ever had to defend this guy. They are not reporting what his policies are doing. They're covering him only from the standpoint of a horse race.

"Is he going to win? Is he going to beat those evil Republicans? Is he going to triumph? Can Obama pull it out? Can Obama pull it out? C-c-can Obama win? How can we help Obama destroy the country? That's what he wants to do, how can we help him out?" They are sacrificing every bit of integrity, objectivity, and professionalism they ever had. And we can debate how much that was. But they've sacrificed. They have punted. They've given it up. They have met their Waterloo. They are destroying themselves to defend President Obama regardless. BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Obama is mad that his presidency might be destroyed. We heard this from Charles Grassley who quotes a member of the House, saying that, "Democrats in Congress could destroy my presidency." And that's what makes him mad. See, he doesn't care if he destroys private insurance companies. He doesn't care if he destroys the automobile industry. He doesn't care if he destroys elements of the private sector. He doesn't care if millions of jobs are destroyed, but, boy, let's start talking about his presidency being destroyed, and now we got some anger and now we got some motivation. And the motivation Rahm Emanuel and the Democrats and Obama are in today is saving his presidency. It's not about giving you health care. It's not about doing anything for you. What have they done for you?

Rich Hrebic, AmericanThinker.com: "'One Step Closer to Losing Your Right to Health Care' -- Isn't the point of the Democrats' push to reform the health care system based on establishing health care as a right? That's what the politicians say of course. But in reality the result will be the exact opposite. Part of the problem is that most Americans don't understand what a right is." Anybody ever ask you to explain or define a right? You may know what it is, but have you ever tried to tell somebody what it is? "A right is not a guarantee that the government (i.e., other people) will provide you something for free." A right does not come because the government grants it. "We have the right to engage in religious expression, but that doesn't mean that the government pays for the construction of the church. We have the right to peacefully assemble, but the government doesn't promise to supply your transportation," to get you there unless you're Obama and have ACORN.

"You have the right to keep and bear arms, but don't expect the government to provide you with a free firearm and bullets. You have the right to free speech, but the government won't grant you free radio or TV airtime. What makes something a right is not whether the government can force somebody else to pay for it. What defines something as a right is whether the government can or cannot prohibit you from doing it." And this is what President Obama calls negative liberties. The Bill of Rights he refers to as a negative liberty because all it does, all they do is define what the government cannot do to you. But it doesn't say what the government can do to you. It doesn't say what the government can do for you. So the Constitution is an obstacle to this man. A right is something that they can't take away in a free society. If the government can't stop you from doing it, then it's a right. And rights came from God. We're all endowed by our Creator to certain inalienable rights, among them life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. But Obama's government's trying to take every one of those away from some people. Life, of course, both abortion and late-in-life death counseling. Liberty. Pursuit of happiness. Young people in America have given an up on that. They just want to survive now. END TRANSCRIPT

You know... every time this subject comes up about the birth certificate, I’ve seen these characteristics that identify those of the “Obama Derangement Syndrome”....

No... it’s a *real syndrome* all right. And there are folks who have it. The only thing I can figure out is that some people “went insane” after Obama was elected and this was how they decided to “cope” with the changed world they were in.

As for myself, I was shocked. What can I say? I mean it was really depressing that Obama was elected — but fortunately — I did not descend into the Obama Derangement Syndrome, but rather, started working with my state legislature to pass legislation to require any candidate produce a birth certificate if they were running for office, or else they cannot be on the ballot.

What can I say? Some people “went insane” and some people “got down to productive work” — in regards to Obama, in order to do something in the “real world”....

Here are some of the characteristics of Obama Derangement Syndrome, that I’ve seen and compiled from interviewing various insane people.... :-)

I’ll outline a few so you can see what I’ve defined as that...

(1) A military coup because Obama is not qualified and the military forces his resignation (there are variations on that but they all center on a military coup, forcing Obama out of office by the military people).

(2) Obama is not President right now... (a real detachment from reality).

(3) Obama can be removed from office as President right now by a judge ordering a U.S. Marshal to walk into the Oval Office and arrest Obama and remove him from the White House.

(4) The reason why Obama has not been removed from office thus far and the courts have not removed him is because there is a widespread conspiracy, fear, or collusion or whatever other reason supplied for the conspiracy. “Everyone” is involved in the conspiracy and thus Obama can’t be removed. (can be variations on this but it’s all about a general and widespread conspiracy as to why Obama is still in office).

(5) The idea that Obama must present his birth certificate, even though there is no legal requirement to do so, and even though no other candidates have ever been compelled, legally, to produce their birth certificate, and that if Obama doesn’t produce his birth certificate, then he is not qualified.

(6) The rejection of simple, real-world solutions to this birth certificate problem (like getting an ordinary state law requiring the showing of a birth certificate), and instead, insisting on “solutions” that don’t work in the real world and/or “solutions” that have not worked in all this time.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2298832/posts?page=141#141

In the political discourse, there has been long-term confusion, in my opinion deliberately caused by the Left, between a "right" (something you can do which the government is disallowed from interfering in) and an "entitlement" (something you may demand some other entity to supply to you).

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