RUSH: Now, I want to illustrate something else, in this audio sound bite here. Yesterday in Albuquerque at a town meeting, Barack Obama, he met with Boone Pickens, and he picked up some more talking points to robotically repeat. Listen to this.
OBAMA: We are sending $700 billion to foreign nations. It’s a huge transfer of our wealth. It oftentimes leads us to funding both sides of the war on terrorism because we’re sending a bunch of that money to the Middle East and countries that don’t necessarily like us, and it is fundamentally impacting our environment. Climate change is real, and we’re starting to see the effects of it, uhh, in — in profound ways, and it’s affecting people’s pocketbooks. So the only way that we are going to solve this problem is if we fundamentally change how we use energy.
RUSH: Now, this is not an Obama original. He had a talk with Boone Pickens, and then he goes out and repeats what Boone Pickens is saying: ‘seven hundred billion dollar transfer of wealth to foreign nations.’ There is no ‘transfer of wealth’ going on here, and Boone Pickens should know that, too. We’re not giving this money away! We are getting something for it. We’re getting oil for it. Forget for a moment from where. We’re going to buy it from someplace if we’re not going to have enough of our own. So whoever gets it, we are exchanging wealth. We’re not transferring anything — and this idiot doesn’t even understand that! The principles of market economics are so foreign to this guy, because I’ll guarantee, he’s never been taught market economics.
He wouldn’t be talking about ‘fairness’ in the capital gains tax rate like he talks about fairness in the income tax rate if he understood market economics. Fairness in the capital gains tax rate in terms of the rich and the poor and who pays, this is absurd. Actually it’s absurd in the income tax rate as well, but, again, that’s liberal doctrinaire dogma. So he goes and talks to Boone Pickens, and Boone Pickens out there with his ‘$700 billion transfer of wealth,’ and bam! There’s Obama picking it up, after one meeting with Boone Pickens. Illustrating, ladies and gentlemen, exactly what I have said, that Obama learns well whatever he hears that interests him, but in terms of being an original thinker, he’s not — and all this other BS, this ‘climate change is real,’ and we’re starting to see the effects of global warming.
We just saw last week where the Sahara Desert , an excavating team in there uncovered evidence of a life lived by human beings in lush circumstances. Five thousand years ago the Sahara Desert was fertile and green and moist, and all of a sudden it’s desert, and it got to be a desert not because of lightbulbs, automobiles, coal plants, oil being discovered, or what have you. So any chance I get to illustrate the — and I think it’s shallow. I think when you get down to Obama, we’re actually talking about shallowness, not depth. Certainly not depth. Now, there’s this. In Denver , on Monday, Arnold Schwarzenegger spoke via satellite to announce a new initiative from the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers and the American Automobile Dealers Association called ‘EcoDriving,’ and here’s a portion of what Arnold said.
SCHWARZENEGGER: Just by following the recommendations in this fantastic website, you can reduce your fuel costs by more than 15% — and I’m talking about simple things, like proper tire pressure, avoiding rapid starts and stops —
RUSH: Oh, my gosh!
SCHWARZENEGGER: — keeping your engine tuned. In fact, if all Americans practiced EcoDriving, the reductions in CO2 emissions would be equivalent to heating and powering nearly eight cities the size of Los Angeles. So we don’t have to wait for politicians to take action. Each of us has the power to make a difference right now.
RUSH: This is just sad. This is disappointing, and it’s just a plain shame. This dates back to the seventies. All this malarkey about avoiding jackrabbit starts and stops and keeping the engine tuned? You don’t tune modern engines! Since 1985 you don’t tune ’em up, and now we’re back to this tire inflation business. I forget the context. Obama originally said that if everybody just inflated their tires, we would save as much oil as we would get with any new drilling. Now, that’s something somebody else told him, and he just went out and regurgitated, because on the face of it, it is disqualifyingly absurd and silly and stupid. We are a growing economy. The game here is the creation and the production of new energy. We’re going to need it.
Not to say we shouldn’t conserve, and inflating your tires may give you a little bit better gas mileage now and then, but you can overinflate your tires if you’re not careful, and cause yourself all kinds of problems. For Schwarzenegger to say… (sigh) You know, we’ve got one of the sorriest groups of leaders across this country that we’ve had in my lifetime. Reduce fuel costs by more than 15% doing all this stuff? This assumes that everybody’s tires are improperly inflated. It assumes that everybody’s out there doing jackrabbit starts and stops. It assumes that everybody is doing everything wrong — which is a liberal point of view about most people. (sigh) Anyway, this ongoing project here to detail and describe the lunacy that passes for policy on the left shall continue on this program, my friends. (laughing) (interruption) Do I jackrabbit start? How would you define a jackrabbit start?
(interruption) No, I do not ‘put the pedal to the metal.’ I do not jackrabbit start. I live in an area where the speed limit’s 30 miles an hour, for crying out loud! I have a car that would be at 30 miles an hour in two seconds if I jackrabbit started it, and then I’d be followed by a blinking red light getting me for speeding because I’d be at 60 miles an hour in four seconds. No, I do not jackrabbit start! I’m not EcoDriving. I’m driving sensibly! (interruption) Okay, I’m a great example. I’m already doing all this. I’ll tell you this. I’m doing everything this stupid website says. My tires are inflated. I check ’em. I had done it long before any of this, and you know why? Because my car tells me when the inflation pressure is down or up — and then the jackrabbit start, all this other garbage — and last I looked, gasoline was the same price as it was a week ago or two weeks ago. Whatever I’m doing right has not brought down the price of gasoline. I’m putting gasoline in the car as often as I always did. This is just nuts, folks. It’s just nuts.