RUSH: That idiot Obama is saying some of the most ridiculous things. He is presenting his energy program in Michigan. Anyway. Anyway, greetings, my friends. Hope you had a great weekend. Rush Limbaugh, the Excellence in Broadcasting Network, raring and ready to go. Another summer spectacular from the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies. Here’s the phone number if you want to be on the program today. 800-282-2882. The e-mail address, ElRushbo@eibnet.com.
He actually just said this, The Messiah, Lord Barack Obama said, ‘We must end the age of oil in our time.’ He’s up in Michigan making this speech, which of course is a state that is in recession and has been for a long time, and he’s up there making all of these statements that will destroy the US economy, and these people are applauding. We must end the age of oil in our time. That’s excellent. What he really means is, ‘We need to end the age of American greatness.’ That’s what would happen if we end the age of oil in our time. He seems to think that we’re a Third World country or we need to be treated that way. He keeps using this line: we use 25% of the world’s oil. We only have 3% of the world’s oil. We need to be punished. He doesn’t say that, but that’s the implication. Now, what’s funny, he’s in Michigan, he’s going through this list of guests, and it’s every failure that led to Michigan being in the condition it’s in, from the governor, to John Conyers, to John Dingell, just going on and on and on down the list, all of these flaming leftists whose policies have given Michigan its economic recession. They’re all up there applauding more of the same, which would make the rest of the country replicate Michigan.
Now, he’s contradicting himself, too. He’s making a big deal in this speech about opposing drilling. It’s a badge of honor to oppose drilling. He says, ‘Bush’s own plan admits, the Energy Department admits, that there wouldn’t be a drop of oil for seven years, that’s not going to provide immediate relief and people want immediate relief.’ That’s also a flip-flop from Obama’s previous statement, which was, he didn’t really care about the high price of gasoline, he was just a little concerned about how rapidly it got to that price level. And of course the tipping point of four dollars a gallon. I had to start the program, of course, so I don’t know if he’s reissued his challenge to people to inflate their tires and get tune-ups so that we could save all the oil we’re drilling. He did re-mention his $1,000 energy rebate to the American people paid for by the obscene profits of Big Oil. We have the most liberal, the most leftist candidate who has ever run for — at least in my lifetime — who has run for president, a sitting duck. This guy’s policies are aimed at destroying the age of American greatness. He keeps talking about renewable energy, and we had a call here not long ago explaining that’s a loaded term. There’s no such thing as renewable energy. Once you burn energy it’s gone. Even the sun is burning itself out. The sun does not renew itself. But it sounds good. And of course windmills and all this stuff, he’s quoting Boone Pickens all over the place, but he’s misquoting Boone Pickens.
Boone Pickens says we need to drill for every bit of oil we can get, Boone is also out there saying we can’t drill our way out of the problem. That’s just absolute nonsense. It defies common sense. Where did this energy that we have that led to this nation being the greatest in the history of mankind, where does this energy come from? There’s only one place, folks. It comes from oil. And the Democrat Party standard-bearer now, the presidential nominee, wants to destroy the fuel that is the engine of freedom and prosperity and American greatness. But he then contradicts himself. He’s now on board to tap emergency oil reserves and also he quoted McCain, said McCain’s got a halfway decent plan to drill some places but we can’t make it the focal point of our desire so now he wants to tap the nation’s oil reserve to help gas prices, which is nonsensical because it wouldn’t have any impact whatsoever. He rips into the oil companies again for not drilling on these 68 million acres where they already have leases and says that if they don’t start using those leases now and drilling for oil there, then we’re going to take the leases away from them and freeze ’em out. Well, if you examine that, I guess he wants ’em to start drilling now on those 68 million acres. The guy is just all over the ballpark with this.
He uses this figure, and the Democrats are using this figure because it came from Boone Pickens. And the figure is this: We are importing $700 billion a year worth of oil. We are spending $700 billion a year on oil. And, of course, the continuation of that is that all of this money is going to terrorists, people that hate us in the Middle East. I got to thinking, I was with some friends up in Connecticut over the weekend, and I asked a question. And I’m going to ask the question of you. When you hear that the United States spends $700 billion a year on foreign oil, who do you think is actually spending the money? Have you ever stopped to think, or have you asked yourself, well, who’s spending this 700 billion? When you hear these words, the United States spends $700 billion a year on foreign oil, what do you conclude? What’s the reaction you have to that? What do you think, Snerdley? No, no, that’s not the point. No, no. The point is, who’s spending it? I don’t care about the number. The number could be $2 trillion. Who is spending it? Who is buying the oil? The statement that Obama and Boone Pickens and the rest of these people make, makes it sound like the US government is spending the money and that we could have that money for other things, of course liberals want social programs and so forth. It’s as though the US government, the United States as a nation is buying $700 billion worth of oil from foreign sources.
Do you think most people know who’s buying this oil? (interruption) Yeah, but who buys it before it’s available to the consumers? Well, not all. It’s not totally the oil companies. The refineries buy it, too. But the point that I’m trying to make here is — and now stick with me on this; this is not a trick question, and not a little pop quiz — I’m talking about the way issues are framed in the minds of the public. Quote, ‘The United States spends $700 billion a year on foreign oil,’ unquote. I will guarantee you that the vast majority of people who pay scant attention, just hear the number, they hear the United States, and they think that our government is bending over backwards, bending over forwards, spending $700 billion to these other nations that hate us, and we’re getting screwed in the process. That $700 billion could be allocated elsewhere, when in fact we are being blackmailed, we are prisoners because these people hate our guts, and the fact that we’re spending $700 billion a year on oil is actually a good thing. It means we have the prosperity to do it, it means that it’s being used. Oil is the fuel for the engine of freedom, progress, growth, democracy, all of these things. But, since it’s being spent on oil, it’s somehow dirty, this 700 billion or whatever the number is, it’s evil, and it is causing us to be imprisoned by our own slothful need for this energy.
This whole attack on oil, this whole attack on energy that is coming not just from the Democrat Party, but from its standard-bearer, Barack Obama, is truly a frightening thing. I’m listening to this speech today, and it’s in the guise of having an energy plan, but he really doesn’t have an energy plan. What this plan is is an attempt to roll back the prosperity of the United States. It’s not about energy. It’s about advancing socialism. It is about expanding government and increasing taxes. It’s about empowering more and more people in government over the individual. It’s being disguised as an energy policy because he knows people are uptight about four-dollar-a-gallon gasoline. I got more on this, lots of other stuff. The Republican congressmen still going to town today, the House of Representatives, no TV cameras are on, but they’re going to stay in the House of Representatives, demand that Pelosi reopen the body so that a debate on gas prices can take place.
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RUSH: I know, I know, I’m just trying to catch as much of this Obama energy speech as possible. ‘We need to end the age of oil in our time.’ That’s Obama today. That means we need to end the age of American greatness. This is a guy who brings nothing substantive to the table. He has produced nothing. In fact, he has stood in the way of an actual inventory to find out just how much oil we have that could be retrieved. He did so supporting legislation a couple years ago. He has spent his life attacking producers, siding with the weirdest anti-American elements he could find in Chicago, and now he’s demonizing energy. This speech is demonizing energy. Energy is now a villain. Energy is a culprit to Obama, and he is being roundly applauded for this as he makes this speech up in Michigan. So he and his crowd have come up with another platitude now, ‘We need to end the age of oil in our time,’ just like we’re going to lower the sea level four feet in our time, demonizing energy. This is a new one. Let’s go to the audio sound bites. This is this morning on Capitol Hill. Republican House members held a press conference, a portion of congressman Mike Pence’s comments from Indiana.
PENCE: What you are about to witness is the beginning of a sustained effort to demand that Speaker Pelosi bring this Congress back to Washington, DC, and give us an up-or-down vote on an energy bill that includes more access to American oil. We are committed to that, and I’m honored to stand with these men and women to do just that.
RUSH: Same press conference, Marsha Blackburn, Republican, Tennessee.
BLACKBURN: The American people want a vote. It is shameful that Congress recessed for five weeks, left for five weeks. The American people are having a difficult time making ends meet. My constituents say they have too much month left at the end of their money. I agree with them. Congress needs to come back in.
RUSH: Yeah, and it’s a gold mine. This issue remains a gold mine for the McCain campaign if they can zero in on this in the right way. They haven’t done too bad a job. Let’s agree on one thing here, folks. And I know you’ll agree because I am your host, now starting our 21st year, the first of 20 more years, by the way. I know that since you have invested 20 years, two decades of trust in me, you will trust me when I tell you, as I have heard this so far, and Cookie’s monitoring, we’ll have sound bites for you from this Obama energy plan as the program unfolds before your very eyes and ears this afternoon, as far as I’ve heard he’s got no plan to reduce prices. Nothing in this plan will reduce energy prices. Zilch, zero, nada. Inflating tires, tapping the strategic oil reserve, now this phony, ‘Well, we’ll see if we can work some deal out,’ which means nothing. You know, work a deal out, it means it’s a political issue to you, not an issue of national security or the nation’s economy.
Now, this, my friends, is an important test of a presidential candidate. Does he have any real-world ideas on how to address major issues, or is he driven by a philosophy that says at all times that the private sector is bad, economic growth is bad, profit is bad, the American dream is bad? You don’t think that’s what he’s saying, I’m telling you, that’s what he’s saying. We must end the age of oil in our time? Stop, people, and think where we would be in this world without the discovery of oil. Where would we be? To demonize it, to demonize energy and to say we’ve gotta get rid of it in our time can only mean one thing because there is no substitute for it, there’s nothing even close. We are not facing a soon-to-be-finite supply of oil. All of these hoaxes and myths are being pounded daily as a political issue to assist in the election of Obama. Speaking of the election of Obama, it ain’t going well. The latest Gallup poll has him and McCain now tied at 44%. If you look at the leaners, McCain is ahead 47-44. The Democrats are very much concerned that Obama can’t close this out.
The Financial Times on Friday afternoon: ”Democrats Anxious for Obama to Widen Lead’ — A number of Democrats, including advisers to the Obama campaign, are worried that the Democratic Party’s overall electoral advantage this year has not yet translated into comfortable leads for Mr. Obama. On Friday Gallup showed Mr. Obama just one point ahead of John McCain — a significant tightening in the past two weeks.’ We all know why. The Germany speech, the whole world tour, the summer intern tour, and McCain’s got a couple of great ads that are running out there on YouTube that are being seen by more and more people. But also this: There’s nothing to this guy, nothing but platitudes. When it’s time to get to the substance, we get contradictions and confusions. We don’t know what he’s talking about, and therefore we don’t think that he knows what he’s talking about, and it’s true, he doesn’t. As I say, he’s a man of very little substance. He’s learned a lot. But in terms of being an individual thinker, it ain’t there.
I’ll tell you something about these polls. If he’s not up by ten to 15 points when we go into late October, he’s toast. Trust me on this. That’s why you get the story from the Financial Times, ‘Democrats Anxious for Obama to Widen Lead.’ Nobody’s going to say it. They’re going to whisper it. But nobody is going to say it. You throw a ten-point lead out, that percentage of people probably lying to the pollsters, for one reason. What’s changed? The very people that should give this big, massive victory voted against him in the late primaries and voted for Hillary, the old-fashioned Democrat so-called constituent, the white blue-collar workers, the bitter clingers, as Obama called them. What’s happened to make them more supportive of Obama? Nothing. What’s happened to make ’em less supportive? A lot. He goes to Germany and trashes his own country. Now, these people may have their problems with Bush, and they may have their problems with Cheney and so forth, but they don’t like some upstart heading over to Germany trashing America when in fact it was America that saved Germany and made Germany as it is today possible. These people are not ignorant, and they don’t forget things, and they’re very patriotic people. Obama has just insulted them, although he doesn’t know that. He thinks that most Americans see their country the way he does, the way his Harvard professors see it, the way Jeremiah Wright sees it, the way William Ayers sees it. That’s his universe. It’s his universe.
So what are we talking about here? We’re talking about America’s greatness and assaults on that greatness and the reasons why America is great. As I have said countless times, America is great because her people are free. America is great because her people are free, and that freedom allows America’s people to be great. It allows them to become extraordinary from the ordinary. Liberty allows the American people to achieve their full potential. Americans cannot fulfill that potential, ladies and gentlemen, if they are weighed down in high taxes, smothering regulations, artificially created economic hardship. I say artificially created because everybody who is serious knows that if we’d open up areas of this country in offshore to exploration, if we’d make use of our massive coal resources to supply us with electricity, our energy prices would drop substantially. Everybody knows it. And look at the jobs that would be created. In the process, it would drive down the cost of virtually everything else in our society.
You want to get rid of oil, fine. What are you going to pay to get produce to the grocery store? What are you going to use and how much is it going to cost? This is absurd, this is insane. It is worse than sophistry. It would also, by drilling wherever, using more coal, being a full-fledged proponent of the greatness that this country owes to its energy use and exploration, it would help revive the airline and automobile industries, it would provide relief to truckers, it would basically stimulate economic growth and expansion in ways that are incalculable. And here’s Obama with a so-called energy plan, but I’m telling you, not one thing about his energy plan will reduce fuel prices, nor will it expand supplies, nothing. There’s nothing about his plan that will grow the economy. There is nothing in his plan that provides the energy for growth which the American people, all desirous of the American dream, not only demand, they expect.
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RUSH: We have five sound bites from the Obama energy speech. He’s in Lansing, Michigan. Here’s number one.
OBAMA: We always do the improbable. We always beat great odds. We always rally together, whatever challenge stands in our way. That’s what we’ve always done, and that’s what we must do now, for the sake of our economy, our security, and the future of our planet, we must end the age of oil in our time.
RUSH: I am just stupefied here. They have officially stamped it now, oil is a villain. Our economic and national security success depends on getting rid of oil. Now, please ask yourselves when did this start? What is it that has led a lot of people to believing that oil is deadly, that oil is destructive, that oil is holding us back? I’m sure it has roots in climate change, in global warming, in pollution and so forth. But, ladies and gentlemen, this is dangerously ignorant. If this isn’t ignorance, if this is actual thinking, it’s even more dangerous. We always beat great odds? We always rally together to meet whatever challenge stands in our way? Oil is an obstacle? Oil is a threat? We gotta get rid of oil? We must come together just like we went to the moon in ten years, and we must get rid of oil? Do you realize the folly of this, the absolute folly? And now they’ve got another platitude here, for the sake of our economy, our security, the future of our planet, we must end the age of oil in our time? I’m just going to tell you, it isn’t possible. It will not happen. The American people will not put up with it. Even those who somehow have been gulled into thinking that this would be a good thing, once they see if anything ever seriously happened on this, once they see what it would do in terms of wrecking their lives, they wouldn’t have anything of it, they wouldn’t put up with it. Here’s sound bite number two.
OBAMA: If we opened up and drilled every single square inch of our land and our shores, we would still find only 3% of the world’s oil reserves, 3% for a country that uses 25% of the world’s oil. Even Texas oilman Boone Pickens — and Boone’s not a Democrat — was calling for major new investments in alternative energy, has said, quote, this is one emergency we can’t drill our way out of.
RUSH: What emergency? What emergency? The emergency is high gasoline prices. The emergency is high energy prices. The emergency is not supply. There is plenty of oil. It’s just that we aren’t able to go get it to increase the supply to lower prices. I’ve heard lament from the left for 30 years now that, you know, we are 3% of the world’s population, and we use 25% of the world’s resources. Obama’s now modified that. We are 3% of the world’s oil, but we use 25% of the world’s oil. They just throw these numbers around, bandying them about, and again, we need to be punished for this, why, we’re greedy, we’re selfish, we’re stealing from other people in the world. As for Boone Pickens, he’s been a little bit misportrayed here. Boone Pickens has suggested that we go all out and drill for every drop we can. He’s got a financial investment in his wind energy and his wind farms. It’s a dual-edged sword, and he wants big time natural gas, the libs ought to be happy. We’re talking alternatives here, aren’t we? But we’re not getting rid of oil at the same time because there’s no need to. Here’s the next sound bite from Obama.
OBAMA: George Bush’s own energy department has said that if we opened up new areas to offshore drilling today, we wouldn’t see a single drop of oil for seven years.
RUSH: So?
OBAMA: Seven years. Senator McCain knows that.
RUSH: So?
OBAMA: That’s why he admitted that his plan would only provide, quote, psychological relief to consumers. I know that’s what you’ve been looking for is psychological relief when you’re pumping —
RUSH: Stop the tape. Just what the hell are you offering? You’re not even offering psychological help. It’s more than psychological help. The markets, the world sees we’re going to get serious about getting more oil, there will be a dramatic impact on those markets. What the hell are you doing, Obama? What the hell are you doing to make people feel good about the future? What are you doing to inspire ’em? What are you saying? What’s your plan? What’s your plan going to do to bring down the price of gas tomorrow? You don’t have a plan. You don’t have a plan to produce more energy or lower prices, period. You got a plan that targets America as guilty and a country that must be gotten even with. I don’t want to hear the rest of that, let’s go to the next bite. This is the release-the-reserves stupidity.
OBAMA: We should sell 70 million barrels of oil from our Strategic Petroleum Reserve for less expensive crude, which, in the past, has lowered gas prices within two weeks. Over the next five years we should also lease more of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska for oil and gas production. And we should also tap more of our substantial natural gas preserves and work with the Canadian government to finally build the Alaska natural gas pipeline, delivering clean, natural gas and creating good jobs in the process.
RUSH: Seventy million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve for less expensive crude, which has lowered gas prices within two weeks — yeah, a couple pennies. Pure, unadulterated sophistry. We use 25% of the world’s resources, we’re only 3% of the population. We use 25% of the world’s oil, we only have 3% of the world’s oil. What do we do with it? Do we not feed the world? Do we not defend the world? Do we not show up at every disaster? I get so tired of my country being portrayed as the essence of evil, as the outpost of imperialism, a nation that is imperfect and needs to get its mind right. The Democrats are apparently so confident that they think they can win the White House with a guy who continually trashes his country under the guise of trying to perfect it and improve it. Now he flop flops here in the next sound bite on drilling again.
OBAMA: A group of Democrat and Republican senators came down and came up with a compromise on energy. It does include a limited amount of new offshore drilling. And while I still don’t believe that’s a particular meaningful short term or long-term solution, what I’ve said is I’m willing to consider it if it’s necessary to actually pass a comprehensive plan.
RUSH: Really?
OBAMA: I’m not interested in making the perfect the enemy of the good, particularly since there’s so much good in this compromise that would actually reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
RUSH: Where do we hear this stupid cliche first? I’m not interested in making the perfect the enemy of the good? Where did I hear that? That’s another one of these platitudes that you might hear from somebody trying to get in the National Honor Society or win the Miss America Pageant. Yeah, I want world peace. At any rate, so he’s for certain kinds of drilling, limited amount of new offshore drilling. ‘I still don’t believe that’s a particularly meaningful short-term or long-term solution. I’m willing to consider it if necessary to pass a comprehensive plan.’ All over the ballpark.
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RUSH: Here’s Peggy in Grantham, Pennsylvania. I’m glad you called, Peggy. Nice to have you here.
CALLER: Hey, Rush, thanks so much for taking my call. I was just wondering if somehow you could get the message to Obama that he should lead by running his campaign without any dependence on oil. You know, that would affect his appearance, his clothes, you know, sunglasses, whatever.
RUSH: Well, it’s a good point. If the era of oil is — get rid of it —
CALLER: Yeah, he might —
RUSH: Right, show a little leadership. Show us how this is done. But see, you have zeroed in on an undeniable truth, and that is while Obama and Pelosi and George Soros and whoever else, Warren Buffett, tell you and me to get off oil, they won’t. They’re the elites. They’re smarter. They’re running the world. They have to be able to get to where they have to go, so there will be a limited use of oil for the world’s elites, the citizens-of-the-world BS, but you and I will be told that we must learn to get by on these newfangled alternatives or without it altogether.
This is Dohrn in Lansing, Michigan, where Obama gave his speech. Hello, sir.
CALLER: Hello. Good morning. Mega dittos, Rush.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: I’m working outside of Lansing center where he’s giving his speech, and there’s several discrepancies. I couldn’t get through, I didn’t hear everything you said in your monologue ’cause he was on our local radio, but they’re saying there was 4,000 people here. And my estimate would be 1,000 and —
RUSH: I’m surprised it’s that low with the unemployment rate in Michigan. I’d think you’d have millions there.
CALLER: That’s perfect, because that’s another thing. We start at 6:30, and at 8:30 we’re on a ten-minute break and one of his people came over with literature and wanting us to sign up and take some of his things, and all the things he promised, we asked this kid, ‘Where do you think those are coming from? It’s not those unemployed or people living off the state already over there, it’s coming out of our paycheck over here.’ Everything that he’s giving away is coming from us that are out here watching this fiasco go on. It’s nuts.
RUSH: It is. It’s surreal. It’s surreal, Twilight Zone-type stuff. I mean here he is in Michigan, a state in full-fledged recession, and the audience is the architect of it, from the governor on down to John Conyers to John Dingell and all these local mayors and so forth, and every time Obama makes a point that would further damage the US economy exactly as Michigan’s has been, they all stand up and applaud. Well, I don’t know if they stood up and applauded, but they certainly applauded. I could hear it. It just remains puzzling. It just remains puzzling that a party can be this open about its desire to inflict damage, real damage on individual citizens via damage on the economy and get away with it. And maybe they won’t. Time will tell.