They Got to Her: Beth is a Conservative, Yet She Believes Gas Conspiracy Theories

RUSH: All right, here’s Beth in Flint, Michigan. Beth, thanks for waiting. I really appreciate your patience.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. Dittos from Flint. I can’t believe I’m talking to you.

RUSH: It’s true, and it’s a day worth celebrating and marking on your calendar so you never forget it.

CALLER: Definitely. And please, I am one of those people who never wants you to take a day off. It’s never as much fun if you’re not there.

RUSH: I appreciate that. But there is life to be lived.

CALLER: Okay, I’m calling because of what you said earlier about the grocery prices in California going up. It just makes sense. It’s obvious that if the price of gas goes up then the price of delivering goods goes up, so the price of goods has to go up, and so the public gets hit at the pump and at the store and everywhere else.

RUSH: You’re very wise. You’re very wise economically. When transportation costs go up because of fuel costs, everything is going to go up proportionally.

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: A bushel of corn is what’s rising because of ethanol production. But the real reason for the story — and she’s right. I mentioned this in the first hour of the program. The LA Times story (paraphrased): ‘New panic! Food prices in California rising faster than they ever have. Oh, no! Oh, no! We’re not going to be able to afford food. We’re all going to die!’ That’s what they want: you in a constant state of panic and tumult and chaos, and they want you to feel like a victim. There are unseen, powerful forces trying to screw you and even kill you. It’s like this idiot from the Center for Science in the Public Interest suing Burger King because they’re killing customers by using trans-fat. That’s right: Burger King wants to kill its customers. The sad thing is there are people in this country who buy into this. Yeah, Burger King is trying to wipe us out. That would make a whole lot of sense. Car dealers want you to die, too, in crashes. They don’t believe in air bags.

CALLER: Yeah, but —

RUSH: Go ahead.

CALLER: Okay. My point is, I’m a conservative in almost every single way you can imagine it, but I do a little bit feel like a victim of these gas prices because I’m having a hard time believing that the price of gas has to be $3.49 a gallon, when the Exxon by itself in 2006 made $39.5 billion dollars in profit.

RUSH: Now you’re just destroying every bit of credibility you established with your analysis of food prices. See, they’ve got you. You have been hooked, Beth. Tell me what you think? No, no, seriously. There’s no wrong answer. Well, obviously wrong answers, but I’m not trying to trick you. Tell me what you think the top two factors, top three factors are in the price of a gallon of gasoline? I take it back. A barrel of oil. Give me the top three factors in the price of a barrel of oil.

CALLER: I’m guessing the actual price and the taxes that they pay and the taxes that the state —

RUSH: No, no, no. What is it that determines the price?

CALLER: Determines the price? You know, you’re going to probably say —

RUSH: Don’t tell me what I’m probably going to say. That’s wifey. Tell me what you would say.

CALLER: At the current price that we are at right now, I think at least part of it is strictly greed, because they can, because they know we have to have it.

RUSH: You know —

CALLER: I’m sorry.

RUSH: Beth? Beth?

CALLER: They’re making $39.5 billion dollars in one year, one company?

RUSH: Beth? Beth? Beth, time-out. Are you really conservative or did you just say that to get past Mr. Snerdley? Because he’s easy when women call, and he’ll believe anything a woman tells him.

CALLER: So you think it’s fair that Exxon — sorry, I shouldn’t have said ‘fair.’

RUSH: It’s not a matter of fairness. Is it fair that restaurants charge $600 for meals? Is it fair?

CALLER: You don’t have to go get a $600 meal.

RUSH: Wait a minute. You have become victimized. You think that there is a giant man behind the curtain out to destroy you by arbitrarily setting the price of a barrel of oil — and it’s clear to me, you don’t have — and I know I sound passionate here. I’m not being critical. I want you to learn. I want you to understand how wrong you are about fairness and greed and all of this. Everybody’s greedy, because everybody does what they do ‘for money,’ even liberals. They set up these ‘nonprofits’ to make it look like they don’t care, but how are they surviving? By the donations of suckers that they send their fundraising letters to. Everybody does it for the money. If you want to find the answer to most questions that you don’t know, follow the money, and you’ll get an answer. In this case, the people that are responsible for the price of a barrel of oil are not doing anything other than trying to make money from it, but there are more than just the oil companies. It’s something so few people understand.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I don’t know where to begin. I’ve done this so many times, I feel like I’m wasting time being redundant here on the price of oil and the price of gasoline. That woman from Flint, Michigan, she ought to go to Wisconsin. They tried to cut gas prices in Wisconsin and the state told this little gas station owner: ‘You’ve got to sell for a minimum 9.2% over your wholesale price.’ If you want to find out who’s really greedy and who’s really going to town on fuel prices, try your local, state and federal governments. They make pure profit on every gallon sold because they don’t have to find the oil; they don’t have to transport it; they don’t have to refine it. They don’t have to do anything except stick their hand in your pockets and Big Oil’s pockets and so forth. There are so many facts in this. One of them is it’s a world market, and there is worldwide demand for this, and it’s only going to increase as the Chinese continue to up-tick technologically. More and more cars are being purchased and driven.

The solution to all this is let the liberals drive their little windmill cars and so forth and hybrids and so forth. The problem is, they try to force everybody into cars they don’t want. Then you’ve got the futures market, the guys on Wall Street, and they’re bidding up and bidding down the price of a barrel of oil, and there are many types of crude, and those things happen every day. People have no idea of the effect on raw crude prices based on just the futures market. It is, after all, a commodity. It is bet on like any other commodity is. I find it fascinating that there are people that actually believe that there’s somebody or a committee or group of people behind a curtain somewhere to say, ‘Time to ratchet up the price,’ and it just happens. ‘Oops, we went too far! Time to ratchet the price down.’ Sadly, to me, it’s understandable why people believe this. Everybody wants to be a victim. They’re trying to make Wal-Mart the next Big Oil. Just look at their enemies list, folks. Look at the Democrat Party’s enemies list and you’ll find out exactly who they are, and they’re not pro-capitalist in any stretch of the imagination.