RUSH: Let me ask you the question again. You think about it for a while. President Bush this week will be in Saudi Arabia. He is going to meet with the head of the royal family there, King Abdullah. He’s going to ask King Abdullah to raise the oil output, to increase oil production. What is wrong with this? What is wrong with this? Greetings, my friends, Rush Limbaugh and the Excellence in Broadcasting Network. 800-282-2882 if you want to be on the program today. Can’t believe the first hour’s already over and we’re into the second one. The address is ElRushbo@eibnet.com. This ought to be very simple answer. We’re going to go to Saudi Arabia and we’re going to ask them to do what we won’t do. We’re going to ask them to increase their oil production to try to get a handle on some of the prices by flooding the market with additional supply, and yet we won’t do it ourselves.
Cal Thomas, great column today: ‘In Defense of ‘Big Oil.” He went out, he talked to Peter Robertson who’s the vice chairman of Chevron, and Peter Robertson told Cal Thomas that ‘it’s a myth that oil companies are not investing in new energy sources. He says last year alone, Chevron spent $20 billion exploring new sources of energy.’ Snerdley, what was the statistic you gave me late last week, Big Oil has been investigating and spending money in alternative sources of energy for how many years? For 20 years, and they’ve spent about a hundred billion dollars on it, one company has, forget which, for 20 years, and they’ve spent a hundred billion dollars on it, and what do they have to show for it? Nothing that’s anywhere near close to replacing oil. Now, the vice chairman of Chevron, again, Peter Robertson, told Cal Thomas, ‘President Bush’s trip this week to Saudi Arabia is ‘highly embarrassing’ because he is ‘calling on the Saudis to produce more oil when we are not doing it ourselves.’ The last refinery built in America was in 1976. Tighter government regulations are the main reason.
‘That’s how unserious we are about our energy ‘crisis.’ Robertson said there would be plenty of oil available to the United States if the oil companies were allowed to get it: ‘Eighty-five percent of offshore oil is off-limits.’ Responding to objections to offshore drilling by environmentalists and their allies in Congress, Robertson noted that some of the strongest pro-environment nations in Europe — he mentions Denmark, Norway, the United Kingdom — lease offshore locations for oil exploration. The technology has become so good, he said, that during Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, ‘one thousand offshore wells were destroyed (in the Gulf of Mexico), but not one leaked.’ Australia, he said, has allowed offshore drilling for 40 years without any environmental damage.’ I don’t believe, as far as the environmentalists are concerned, it has anything to do with environmental damage. That’s just their cover. This has everything to do with cutting the United States down in size. This has everything to do with attacking capitalism and the world’s lone remaining superpower. And I have to tell you, it offends me to no end to see the Republican Party going along with this. It offends me to no end.
This is the kind of stuff that we expect to come out of the Democrat Party and the liberal Democrats. We expect it, and we expect to battle it. We expect to fight ’em on it. We expect to defeat them on it. But I guess that has gone by the wayside now. It’s just frustrating as it can be. The idea that we now have ways to do all this without any environmental damage at all, and we still can’t do it. And yet we run around the world asking other oil producers to produce more. I’m biting my tongue here. I’ve read some e-mails here, ‘But, Rush, but, Rush, you don’t understand, McCain is simply seeking Democrat votes. It’s about winning the election.’ Look, winning the election, seeking Democrat votes. ‘He doesn’t really mean this, Rush, he doesn’t.’ I can’t take that chance. I’ve never heard him so enthused. He was more passionate in this speech than I’ve heard him in years, about anything, other than maybe amnesty for illegal aliens and campaign finance reform. I don’t care if it’s about getting Democrat votes. I don’t want Democrat votes this way.
Cal Thomas’ piece continues. ‘In addition to the sinking value of the dollar, here is the main problem: According to the Department of Energy, US oil production has fallen approximately 40 percent since 1985, while the consumption of oil has grown by more than 30 percent. According to government estimates, there is enough oil in areas accessible to America — 112 billion barrels — to power more than 60 million cars for 60 years.’ I mentioned all of this last week. I’m glad it’s showing up in print here. ‘The Outer Continental Shelf alone contains an estimated 86 billion barrels of oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Had President Clinton not vetoed exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in 1995, when oil was $19 a barrel, America would currently be receiving more than 1 million barrels a day domestically, all of it taken by better technology than existed more than 30 years ago. That was when the Alaskan pipeline was built despite protests from environmentalists who claimed it would destroy the caribou. It didn’t, but the environmentalists are back with the same discredited arguments. Because most of the oil remains ‘off-limits,’ we are becoming more dependent on foreign oil.’
I remember Clinton saying, ‘It will take ten years for this stuff to come online.’ Well, ten years ago, we’d have started, that was 14 years ago, when Clinton said it, we’d have that million barrels a day being pumped right now. Bill Clinton, for his part, could probably go to the oil companies, ’cause he’s going to need a job. He’s going to need something. I wouldn’t be surprised, folks, when this presidential campaign is over, I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a movement, it will be a quiet movement, there’s going to be a movement in the African-American community to get Clinton’s office moved out of Harlem. After all this race card business that they’ve been — well, they have been playing it. And Mrs. Clinton running around talking about the white people won’t vote for Obama and so forth. It isn’t going to be long before the black community tells Clinton, ‘We don’t want you here in Harlem anymore. You’re no longer the first black president.’ In which case, Clinton is going to need a gig.
So what Clinton ought to do, get on the phone to Big Oil. (doing Clinton impression) ‘Hey, guys, you understand how really valuable to you I am? Ha-ha-ha. You talk about foresight. I see so far down the road, farther than you see down the road. They wanted me to okay that drilling up there in ANWR back in 1994, right? And what was the price of oil back then? The price of oil, $19, right? Look at how much money you would have lost by drilling way back then. I have saved you until now, if you start drilling now, if we get permission I’ll work with you on this, I still have a lot of influence with people, you’re going to start pumping oil down there at $126 a barrel. I have saved you money; I have earned you money. We’re going to get this done, guys. You are my buddies now, and I can get this done for you at a price that you never dreamed of being able to get. They kicked me out of Harlem. I gotta go somewhere. I may as well go with you guys. No place else in my party is going to have me. Hell, McCain’s taken my place in my party. What am I going to do?’
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RUSH: George in Gillette, Wyoming, we’re going to start on the phones with you today, sir. Nice to have you here. Hello.
CALLER: Thank you very much. It’s an honor.
RUSH: Appreciate that.
CALLER: Greetings from the great coal producing state of Wyoming. It’s amazing to me. You’re the only voice of reason on this global warming subject. I, in grade school, studied about dinosaurs 60 million years ago roaming the earth, and the very coal that we produce is a deposit from the plants and animals that couldn’t possibly live in the environment that we have in Wyoming, North Dakota, Montana, Canada today. I mean, there is evidence of cypress trees, fish fossils, dinosaur fossils, all kinds of physical evidence that proves that this earth was a lot warmer then than it is now.
RUSH: Of course. This is what gets so tiresome about this.
CALLER: The very concept that John McCain could believe in dinosaurs and believe in the ice age that carved out the great Rocky Mountains and still have an energy policy that he’s got sickens me as much as it does you.
RUSH: Yeah, but let me tell you something. You say I’m the only voice of reason. That’s not true. There are a whole lot of people who hold this view, and they’re more numerous than anybody knows, and they are going to be sorely felt on Election Day. Now, I will admit that I am the largest voice on this, and as such I carry a great responsibility with me on this. There’s no question that I’m the largest voice on this. This is what becomes so frustrating. Common sense, an undeniable past, as opposed to a wild-guess future. We know there is no doubt that it has been much colder in many parts of the world, including ours, in the past, and we know that it happened because of nothing ancient man could have done or did do. Natural climate variations — in fact, global warming scientists explaining why it’s not going to get warm is an arrested movement here in global warming for the next 10 or 12 years because of natural variations, natural cooling variations. Now, this is very clever of them, because, you see the template, the action line on all of this is, there is global warming, and it is manmade. So when something’s going to happen to delay the accuracy of their forecast, such as 10 to 12 years of cooling, then of course that could be a natural variation, a natural variation into what man is doing.
The earth, fortunately, has the ability to counteract what we’re doing, but only for 10 or 12 years, and after that, it’s going to be smokin’ hot. It’s just going to climb, the temperature is going to climb, and we’re not going to be able to do anything about it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. If there are natural cooling cycles, which we know to be the case, then just stands to reason there have to be natural warming cycles. We have an indisputable past, examples such as those offered by George here, and there are countless other examples of ice ages and mini-ice ages. And, of course, it’s a lot warmer now than it was during those ice ages, so we know there’s a natural warming cycle as well. So we are going to ignore the known past and trade that in for a wild-guess future. This wild-guess future is only a wild guess. It’s not a wild guess in one area. There’s one part of the future that we can predict if either Senator McCain and his government or Barack Obama and his government get their way on this, what I can predict to you with full knowledge I will be exactly right in the future is that you’re going to lose a little freedom, you’re going to lose a little liberty, and it’s going to cost a lot more to live, and we’re going to destroy a lot of wealth trying to create new wealth with alternative energy by getting rid of oil, carbon emissions, and so forth and so on. We know that’s going to happen, if these two guys get their way. What’s going to happen as the result of that is that we’re going to get poorer. There is an attack on capitalism taking place throughout the world, and it’s just outrageous that we have American leaders willing to facilitate that attack on capitalism and then have the audacity to say that what we’re going to be doing is somehow related to free markets.
This is Rick in Chicago. Rick, you’re next on the EIB Network, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Hello, Rush, how are you?
RUSH: Fine, sir. Thanks much.
CALLER: Longtime listener, love the show. Sometimes I wish I could come down and give you a pat when you’re feeling a little low.
RUSH: Well, I’m not feeling low. I’m trying not to explode here.
CALLER: Not today.
RUSH: That’s why you hear me pausing and sighing. I’m trying not to literally blow up here. I’m not sad.
CALLER: I have this question of you. Whose oil would you rather be using right now, ours or someone else’s? If in fact that there’s a limited supply of oil on the earth, whose oil would you rather be using?
RUSH: I’d rather be using ours.
CALLER: I disagree with that to some extent in that I think what we need is oil security, and not so much to use our own oil.
RUSH: Well, wait a minute. You cannot be serious. Do you think being dependent on a bunch of people that have no love for us somehow increases our oil security?
CALLER: I think that Bush, by moving the number of troops and support that we have in the Middle East, he perhaps thinks that we have the security we need.
RUSH: I don’t follow that whatsoever. Bush, by moving the number of troops and support that we have in the Middle East, thinks we have the security that we need?
CALLER: Security for the delivery of oil to this country. When you take in all factors, you know, a lot of it comes from South America, some from Russia, a lot from the Middle East, by having a presence there —
RUSH: What are you saying? If any one of these countries declines to sell us oil we’re going to attack ’em?
CALLER: Not necessarily, but, you know, we’re certainly in a position to say, you know, what you’re doing right now ain’t so good and we’ll do something about it. You know, if it’s an economic threat, it’s a threat.
RUSH: Yeah. Well, there wouldn’t be any economic threat if we had our own oil and if we were using our own oil, and it wouldn’t be nearly as expensive as it is today, gasoline and all the derivative products of oil wouldn’t be nearly as expensive because there wouldn’t be the ability to have contrived shortages. The idea that we are more secure by using somebody else’s oil — the thinking on this is let’s use theirs, sort of like the idea of using other people’s money when you want to finance your business or your home or whatever, go out and borrow it and so forth. I don’t want that kind of debt when it comes to oil. I’d just as soon have our own. Believe me, there is no grand strategy here to protect our oil, and only go get it when the rest of the world runs out. That’s not what this is about. There’s no grand thinking, nobody’s forward thinking, saying, ‘Okay, let’s use up all the Saudis’ oil, and then they’ll be nobodies, and let’s have Hugo Chavez use up all of his oil, and then he’ll be a nobody, and then let’s have the Russians, let’s have them use up all their oil, and then they’ll be nobody, and then when they don’t have their oil and they’re nobody, that’s when we’ll start getting our own and we will once again own the world.’ Ain’t going to happen, is not part of the plan, primarily because that kind of thing would take so many years to play out. The amount of oil that is underneath the ground in all these countries that you have mentioned is decades and decades and decades. This is not the way to do it. We are not increasing our security at all by not having our own oil, pure and simple.