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April 19, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:24
April 19, 2006, Wednesday, Hour #2
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I I'd just like to do it for one day.
Just one day, just to show how it's done, and then out of there.
But I wouldn't want to, I wouldn't want to be the White House press spokesman in perpetuity.
I was just telling uh the official program observer here, Mr. Snerdley, that uh Fox News Tony Snow is on a candidate list to replace uh Scott McClellan, who uh retired today, and and Fox News is the source of this.
I don't know who else to be considered, obviously there are others, but anyway, uh greetings and welcome back.
Nice to have you.
L. Rushball, the EIB network 800-282-2882, and the uh email address uh rush at EIB net.com.
Uh let's go to audio summit.
Uh let's go through five through wait wait, the the the drive-by media has pretty much placed the Rumsfeld story in the morgue.
There are just a couple lingering attempts here to uh to continue to force Rummy out, but Rummy has been so insistent, so is the president.
I mean, the strategizing of the forces here arrayed to get Rumsfeld, which is really an attempt to get Bush.
You gotta wonder about their their own planning abilities, because all they've done is really cement Rumsfeld as the um Secretary of Defense.
Oh, and speaking of that, let me find it here in the stack.
Uh Bob Novak in his newsletter to paying subscribers.
Oh, do you hear about Sammy L. Arian?
It recently released court papers.
He admits everything.
He admits everything.
He admits to raising money, lending support to Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
He admits to knowing that the Palestinian Islamic Jihad achieved its objectives by, among other means, acts of violence.
He admits he's been lying about it since the allegations first emerged in 1995.
Defendant is pleading guilty because defendant is in fact guilty, reads the agreement Al Arian signed, which is a far cry from the claim.
Heard just a few months ago that Al Arian was an innocent whose uh civil liberties were trampled.
He's expected to be released from prison shortly, upon which he will be deported.
Uh but I remember all everybody came to his defense.
Ah, this guy can't possibly no, he couldn't possibly uh the liberals and the ACL bunch of people came to his defense.
And they have trouble convicting him uh convicting him at trial on uh on all accounts, but uh papers released recently show that uh he admitted it.
Where is this?
Uh here it is.
Evans Novak political report.
What's happening?
Who's ahead in politics today?
Dated yesterday.
The greatest source of animosity toward Rumsfeld from within the Pentagon, however, has nothing to do with Iraq.
It centers on the modernization and reorganization of the military that Rumsfeld has been conducting since his confirmation in 2001.
Rumsfeld efforts have brought him into conflict with much of the top brass in the Pentagon.
His exit now would not fix the problems in Iraq.
However, it could hobble the reorganization effort, which may turn out to be his most enduring legacy as Secretary of Defense.
There have been people that were speculating that that's what this was really all about.
That he was uh and you've had him, we've had him on this program.
People have called and discussed that, that he was he's just he's turning everything upside down in there, going from a cold war type structure, having to rebuild a Clinton administration and let the military lapse into a social playground, an experimentation lab.
Uh and and some things had to be done to fix it, uh, particularly after 9-11.
And a lot of feathers are being ruffled in there, and a lot of a lot of people who thought they had lifetime careers based on an old structure finding that they may not.
And so naturally there's uh there's an upheaval inside the Pentagon and uh uh a bunch of noses out of joints.
It's probably a combination of two, but the and if if that is the real reason behind the scenes for this uprising, what better way to cover that than to go out and join the chorus of all the people on the left and the drive-by media uh uh uh on uh concept that rock is a failure, it's going nowhere, we're losing left and right, it's horrible.
Uh Rumsfeld, a horrible architect, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Anyway, today on uh today's show, Matt O'Hauer was talking uh to Thomas Friedman, and this is after he uh made the point that he he wishes for hundred dollar a barrel oil.
The uh question from Matt Wauer, you wrote Donald Rumsfeld's uh criminally negligent decision not to deploy enough troops in Iraq to begin with, created a security vacuum.
But the insecurity was compounded by the unique enemy that emerged to take advantage of that vacuum uh vacuum.
It's one thing for you to criticize Rumsfeld.
Now six retired generals have come out.
What do you think about during a time of war talk like this simply emboldens our enemies?
Anything's gonna embolden the enemies in terms of criticism of the United States.
I think what this talk from the generals tells you is how deeply they feel we're on a wrong track in Iraq.
The key criticism for Rumsfeld from my point of view is not what you know he says, uh gosh, I just did what the general said.
If they wanted more troops, uh if they had asked me, I would have sent them.
The question for him, Matt is what did you ask them?
Any six-year-old could see the situation was out of control.
Okay, so um we're the the these are these are the last attempts here, and they may not be.
I mean, they may be regrouping out there for uh for another assault from over the hill uh on Rumsfeld.
Now, uh see, I told you so, because what I mentioned yesterday was that really all this is is uh if if it is what it appears to be, it's aimed at Bush.
And clearly, Friedman, it's aimed at Bush, a bunch of other people who have joined the movement of the six or seven generals, they're buying into the notion it's about Rumsfeld's incompetence and that it's aimed at Bush.
On the early show today, the uh the uh the esteemed uh John Mertha was the guest, and he was asked the following question.
You said in the past that this is President Bush's war, but it sounds like just now you're talking about the Secretary of Defense.
We're hearing all this criticism of the Secretary from all sorts of corners.
Is this the President's war to fight?
Is this criticism really aimed at the President?
Well, certainly it's aimed at the President.
It's it's aimed at the war itself.
Over 60% of the people in America are against this war.
Forty-seven percent of the Iraqis say it's all right to kill American.
Our troops are caught in a civil war.
The military commanders have said for over a year we cannot win this militarily.
I talked to the military commanders in and out, active and inactive, reserve, uh regular, and they all say the same thing.
You can't win this war.
Okay, so the Democrats are now joining up and they're getting their act in gear.
Dick Turban said this about Rumsfeld resigning.
I can tell you that a number of us are talking about how we want to do this and when.
But I think we need to have a vote of confidence on Secretary Rumsfeld.
Let the Senate go on record.
You already did that.
You confirmed him.
It's called a confirmation vote in 2001.
You want to go on the record on everything.
No, you don't.
They don't want to go on the record on everything.
But I mean, this is just I know we don't have votes of confidence on cabinet members.
I know this is not Parliament.
We don't have votes of confidence.
Now the Senate can do whatever it wants to do, but this is not part of the system that we have.
Last night on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, uh, none other than Senator McCain appeared.
And Leno said, How about these retired generals coming out?
They want Rumsfeld to resign.
What do you make of that?
You're a military man.
I respect their right to do that when they retire.
I think that he's pretty rough on a lot of these people.
Um I also understand their concerns, and maybe we can learn from them.
He is still the president's choice.
The president was elected and re-elected, and I have to respect uh the I thought this was a comedy show.
I I thought I thought the tonight show was a comedy show.
When did it stop being a comedy show?
That's about it.
I've ever heard anything on the tonight show.
Otherwise, Johnny Carson thanked everybody, started crying and closed the curtain for the final time.
So uh those are the those are the remnants of the um uh the drive-by media hit on uh on Rumsfeld, as you heard Murtha say it's actually aimed at uh at President Bush.
Brief timeout will come out.
Talk a little bit here about the um interesting development down at Durham at Duke University on the alleged rape case.
Okay, so so Mirtha Mirtha says that uh all the active forces say we can't win the war, and we know that's not true.
It it statistically cannot be true.
Uh and we had an audio soundbite not long ago of a guy at a public meeting letting Mirtha have it on what he was you remember that we're letting Murtha have it on what he was saying about this kind of thing, just in a in a public meeting, and it it shut them all up.
Um But here's the thing.
You know, Clinton talked up Hussein and how big a problem he was.
But how many troops did Clinton send?
Zero.
And see, that's the bottom line.
A lot of a lot of people, particularly those of you on the left, you think that the Pentagon thirsts and hungers for battlefield combat, blood, guts, mortar fire, smoking ruins.
You think they live for it.
The dirty little secret is that they don't.
Many of these ex-generals probably opposed going to war all together.
We know that most of these commentators oppose the war.
And uh we also know the president's the one that gets to make that decision, not the generals and not the commentators.
But there's I'll I'll I'll bet you that there's a cadre of people inside the Pentagon that never do want to go to war because they're afraid of failure.
They have their they're like anybody else.
They've got their positions, they've got pensions, they've got you know, employment for as long as they need it, unless we go to war and it's bungled and it doesn't go right, and then there's you know, there's a price to pay.
Heads roll.
And uh some people just have this this this safety precaution, and rather than risk losing, we won't go all at all.
And I I wouldn't be surprised if that's uh uh represented here by uh a sizable contingent of some of these uh ex uh generals and uh so forth.
Uh you know, when somebody says that all the active service folks have been telling him this or that, that it's just an out and out lie, flat out lie uh because there is no such thing as all.
There's too many people involved here for them all to think that we're losing and that we can't win and on and on.
Let's go to the phones to Miami.
Tom, I'm glad you waited.
Welcome to the uh program.
Hey, Rush.
Uh thanks for taking my call.
I think uh victory should be declared today for Donald Rumsfeld.
He's the first conservative to stand up to the liberal media and not back down, not resign and not get fired.
It should embolden the other politicians to stand up to him and not back down from them.
And as far as these generals, I guarantee you they're guaranteed talk spots and all the liberal television shows for reward for their uh betrayal.
That's my comment.
Um you know, I saw a story in the uh where did I see this?
It was a it might have been an opinion piece.
I'm sorry, I didn't print it out, but it might have been last night, but somebody wrote a piece on um oh, I know who it was.
It was Ralph Peters today in the New York Post, who uh agrees with the ex-generals, and he writes a piece defending them to the hilt.
Says they're right, uh Rumsfeld really is not good for this position, blah, blah, blah, blah.
But he makes the point that they've sacrificed everything by doing this, that they're not gonna get cushy private sector jobs.
They're not gonna get di jobs in the in the in the defense industry where they know people that they're not gonna that they've sacrificed everything.
They sacrificed lucrative futures uh in order to go out and alert the American people to what's what's really going on.
Now I think Tom raises a good point.
They'll always have a home in the media.
There's uh there's no question if if they want to uh go that route.
I don't know if Rumsfeld's the first Republican to refuse to buckle under the pressure from inside the beltway, the drive-by media and the Democrats not to resign, but he is providing good abject lesson on how you deal with it, and so's Bush.
Because they both they're both basically saying, screw you.
Bush is saying it's not your call.
I choose Secretary of Defense, and there's one guy in his country I want to be Secretary of Defense, Don Rumsfeld.
Next question.
And Rumsfeld's saying the same thing.
But in all fairness, if Bush wanted to fire him now, he can't now.
And if Rumsell wanted to quit, he can't now, not under this kind of pressure, because that would be caving huge time, uh big time.
And I I don't I don't know that either is the case.
I'm just speaking hypothetically.
Paul, cell phone call from Ohio.
Welcome to the program, sir.
Not to have you with us.
Uh great to have you with us.
Yeah, Russ, great to be on.
Hey, President Bush has uh hardly had any change in his staff.
It's probably been one of the lowest administrations with staff changeover ever, and the two people that are leaving or moving have high integrity, no scandals.
I mean, look at the D D D UI drunk D.D. Myers, if you want to make a comparison, that's this is though uh the real story here is how little change there's been in President Bush's uh staff.
Yes.
Uh that is now wait.
Dee Dee did not have a DUI while she was the spokesbabe.
No, you're right.
It was actually.
No, she didn't.
Now that's not that that happened.
Uh that happened later, and her boyfriend, uh now husband, uh writer at the New York Times uh helped her through the circumstance.
Well Todd Purdue is a very good idea.
But but but look still your point is well taken.
Uh the this is this is uh administration remarkably uh uh consistent with few staff departures uh and and so forth.
But y y what you say is true, but you see, we we we have an alternate uh reality, a parallel universe.
And the truth is not the media action line.
The drive-by media's truth is this administration's out of control.
It's populated, it's led by a dunce frat boy idiot one day.
The other day he's so diabolical and and and and smart that he can run rings around everybody, but most of the days he's a he's just an idiot.
He's just a dunce.
Uh make him go sit in the corner with little clown hat.
Uh and of course, he's got a bunch of maniacal uh devious incompetent dictator types running his cabinet, a la Rumsfeld and so forth.
Uh so he's and and of course Cheney, uh there's the guy that's the real power behind the throne.
Dick Cheney is the guy that's really pulling all the strings.
He's the man behind the curtain.
Uh and so the the look this look at this administration's hires compared to Bill Clinton's minority, like uh Condoleezza Rice.
Bill Clinton never put high ranking positions uh uh filled them with women.
Madeline Madeline Albright, but not minority women.
Uh uh he's done more for the the cause of diversity in the uh in the uh populating of his staff and so forth.
But that's that's not going to be reported.
I'm just I'm glad you observe it, and probably more people than you know also.
Uh let's let me see.
John let me go down to Collegeville, Pennsylvania here for just a second.
Um Charles in Collegeville.
I'm glad you called, sir.
Welcome to the EIB network.
Thank you, sir.
I had an observation about uh all this complaining on the gas prices.
Yes.
Um two things.
One's mathematical.
You go back to your original statement that in 2004, the price of the barrel of oil was $37, and the average gallon of gas was a dollar eighty-five.
That's right.
This morning, mid-morning oil hit $33.62 a barrel.
That's almost exactly double that $37.
Well, if you double the $185, that means gas should be $370 a gallon.
And nobody's projecting it to be anywhere near that high.
Now there was an article today, or excuse me, yesterday, in the Washington Times business section that says, and I quote, on an inflation-adjusted basis, oil prices would have to rise above ninety dollars to exceed the record set a quarter century ago when supplies became tight in the aftermath of a revolution in guess where Iran and a war between Iran and Iraq broke out.
In 2005 dollars, the average price of crude in 1980 was just under $77 a barrel.
Now the government didn't fall apart.
Uh industry did not grind to a halt.
The world did not stop in the 80s.
Yes, we had to make some adjustments.
But people are just using this now as a means of beating up everybody and everything they can when functionally speaking, the price of gas is not as high as it should be if we look at statistical numbers.
No, I agree with you totally.
That was I'm glad you called because that's that's the point.
The price of gas is pretty much right where it should be with the price per barrel at sixty five bucks.
But he's exactly right.
If you take the O4 numbers, where the price of a barrel of crude was 37 bucks and the average price of gas nationwide was a buck eighty-five, and you double that that thirty-seven dollars because it is seventy-three bucks this morning uh the per barrel price.
A gallon of gasoline ought to cost the national average ought to be three dollars and seventy cents a gallon.
And that means it ought to be up over four in certain sectors of the country.
And it's uh in certain certain sectors, it's a little over three, but it's not where it should be.
But you know, the the the uh there's a story here in the stack.
I I'll I'll get to it in a minute for the with the details.
But it says uh it's a Gallup poll, and it the reason that the American people do not feel Optimistic and upbeat.
That's what they say, by the way, the conference board's consumer confidence survey would disagree with this, but Gallup says the reason people are not going rah-rah over the economy is the fact that they remember the stock market high tech bubble bursting in uh in 2000.
And that memory is still very clear on their mind.
Now, of course, that was uh that was uh uh result of the Clinton economy, which was built on some false pillars.
Uh but whether you believe that or not, the fact of the matter is that the despite what the gas price is, despite where the barrel of oil is, you still have people out there concerned, well, I don't care the commensurate prices, I want to know about the profits these people are making.
Why are their profits going up?
Why are their profits higher today when the proportionate prices are the same uh when they weren't as high profit-wise uh in 2004?
So there's going to be criticism no matter the reality.
In the midst of having more fun than a human being should be allowed uh to have.
800-282-2882.
Ladies and gentlemen, I need I need to beg your uh forgiveness uh and ask you to accept an apology.
And this is not a criticism of our previous caller, yet this is an illustration of how easy it is to succumb to the uh forces of the drive-by media.
We had a we had a caller a moment ago, and I f I forget which one.
Uh, but he said the real news of this administration is how little turnover there's been and how uh uh that's the big story.
This is not an unstable administration.
I'm not saying the administration is unstable by any stretch, but uh the part of the part of the drive-by media hit here uh when it comes to Rumsfeld and and now Rove and and uh Scott McClellan.
The false story has been that there haven't been changes in this administration.
Bush is stubborn, he needs to get new blood in there, and if staff change, staff turnover, this administration is going to hell on a handbasket because Bush doesn't change things up.
But there have been cabinet changes.
Can I go through them?
It's state.
Uh Colin Powell, adios, hello, Condoleezza Rice.
In the Justice Department, John Ashcroft is gone, hello, Gonzalez.
Health and Human Services, there has been a change.
There's been a change at uh the Department of Agriculture.
There's been changes at the Department of Education and in the Interior.
Gail Norton is leaving.
And uh though those are just the names, some that come to mind.
The National Security Advisor uh position has seen uh turnover, the White House Council has seen turnover, the press secretary uh McClellan replaced Ari Fleischer.
Uh they all changed.
So what what what do they mean?
There haven't been any changes.
In fact, there was a change at Treasury as well.
Uh bye-bye Paul O'Neill and hello John Snow.
Uh there was, as I said, change at the Environmental Protection Agency.
So what is all of this about no change?
This is just the UN ambassador changed.
John Bolton's up there.
We changed CIA directors.
Bye-bye, George Tennett.
Uh, hello, uh, Porter Goss.
So, see, you see how easy it is to respond to the the drive-by media spin that this is a stubborn, obstinate administration and president that will not modernize and will not get rid of dead weight and so forth.
Nothing uh could be further from the truth.
What they really mean, folks, what the drive-by media clowns really mean when they say there hasn't been enough changeover in this administration.
What they really mean is Bush needs to get rid of Rove, he needs to get rid of Rumsfeld, and he needs to get rid of Cheney.
The media just want a mass firing to play into their story about an administration in decline and out of control.
So when you hear them say, well, there just hadn't been enough change, this administration is locked in and uh stubborn and uh we need new blood, these jobs are tough, people burn out, need new excitement in there.
All they mean is Bush needs to get rid of Carl Rove, fire Rumsfeld, and send Cheney back to Wyoming.
That's all they mean.
And this is again not meant to criticize the previous caller, it's just an illustration of how we uh we all get sucked in at times if we're not careful uh with the day-to-day spin from the drive-by media.
Dan in Memphis, hello, sir.
Welcome to the EIB network.
Russ, it's an honor to speak to you, sir.
Thank you, sir.
I I just had a real quick point to make about uh um the drive-by general.
Um the history it occurred to me that that uh except for uh a few individuals uh the people that tend to rise to those rarefied ranks in the military tend to be more politicians than innovators uh with very profound uh uh self-interest in in maintaining the status quo.
Uh and the the best example I could think of, and one that I've been dying to hear somebody mention uh ever since all this stuff about the six generals, the g the gang of six came up uh uh was the case of uh the story of Billy Mitchell, the founding father of modern air power.
Uh he was dealing with with with a uh uh an army entrenched in in uh armor and infantry and a navy that was entrenched in in battleships, and uh he was actually court-martialed for being uh uh a vocal proponent of air power, and he turned out to be right.
And uh he didn't convince anybody in the Pentagon.
The one person you did can convince was FDR, who managed to make sure that things like the B-29 uh got built and helped us win that war.
In fact, you know, just to give you uh some some backup on this, my father uh served in World War II, he flew B-25 Mitchells and uh P-51s, uh and he was in the China Burma Theater in uh in World War II, and I said when I was old enough to uh you know understand all this stuff.
I said, So you were in the Air Force.
Oh no, there wasn't any Air Force then.
The Army Air Corps.
I was in the Army Air Corps, and uh a picture of him right over there in his Army Air Corps jacket uh here in our EIB Southern Command studio.
And that's exact that's pretty close to right.
Billy Mitchell was was I mean, they just tried to destroy the guy because he wanted to upset the conventional balance and structure of uh of our armed forces at the time.
But uh FDR's the one guy who listened to him and look I mean to say that he was right is sort of um uh redundant.
I mean it's it hardly goes with it hardly deserves mentioning.
And now the the first practically the first wave of any assault uh in in recent history has been air power.
Uh and and if if we ever do something in Iran, it'll be air power.
Uh but the guy stuck to his guns.
Now these these are these are all fascinating history lessons.
They really are.
People uh I I'm convinced that uh Dan, your information has shocked a bunch of people who are hearing it for the first time, and they may have college degrees.
And they may be hearing this for the first time, that the guy who actually proposed an air force, not by name, but uh tried to sell the concept of air power, was court-martialed for it.
Because he was it was he insisted on it uh and and uh they just didn't like the the balance of power that would be upset with the creation of that of that new force.
Uh John in Evansville, Indiana.
Hello, sir, welcome to the EIB network.
Yes, hello, Rush Ditto's from Southern Indiana.
Thank you, sir.
Uh in uh I want to know what our elected officials are going to get off the gas companies and get on to the dairy corporations because there's a much bigger problem there.
I live in southern Indiana and I pay about 329 for a gallon of milk.
I pay two eighty-five for a gallon of gas.
Now think about what it takes to get a gallon of gas from the the location of the crude oil into my gas tank and what it takes to get a gallon of milk from fifteen miles away in a pasture from my house to the grocery store.
No, I've I've used this excuse or analysis, if you will, with bottled water, I've always thought the oil guys have to hate the bottled water guys.
Because the per gallon price of bottled water dwarfs the gallon price of gasoline, and these uh these water guys, you know, they claim just to go find some spring nobody ever found before, tap it, put a label on a plastic bottle, they don't even put fluoride in it.
And they just stick it to the store and bamboo, there it is.
Uh and and it's the distribution expiration costs are nothing.
The refining costs are nothing uh compared to what oil goes through.
But when I mentioned This uh and you can do it with milk and you can do it with uh a number of other substances and commodities too, but w people always say, yeah, but I don't use water by the gallon, not out of the not out of those bottles.
I don't I don't take showers with bottled water and I da-da-da, but I burn gasoline like crazy, so the consumption rate's not the same.
So your price comparison doesn't hold limb, you idiot.
Uh or something like that.
But in terms of just the costs, I'd have to say we're really overpaying for bottled water based on it oil giving you right what it takes to find it, to uh bring it up, to transport it, to refine it, and then distribute the products.
Uh my gosh.
Well, I I think bottled water, I don't know what the salaries of the average bottled water exe executive or CEO is.
I haven't seen a report on the retirement packages of the well.
They are now, you know, that's true.
Most not all, but m but most bottled water companies are actually subsidiaries of big soda.
Big pop.
Uh and so those guys are doing pretty well.
There's no question.
They all started out as a little boutique operations and and uh the the big soda said, well, we gotta these guys can be selling water, we gotta get on this too.
So they go out and buy it, change the name of it or uh or what have you.
Anyway, uh I I know I threatened to do this.
We'll do it after the break.
The uh interesting new evidence that one of the uh defendants in the Duke rape case is making public to ABC.
Get to that right after this.
You're guiding light through times of trouble, confusion, murkiness, tumult, chaos, out of control, gasoline and oil prices, torture, humiliation, white house shakeups, and even the good times.
Uh Rush Lynbought 8282, 2882 from the email.
Dear Rush, I've been listening to you today.
You're more interested in the process of if a price of a gallon of gas is priced right based on the cost of a barrel than the fact that the consumer's getting screwed and hurt by the high costs.
You're out of touch.
The fact is that the cost should not be at $70 or so per barrel.
You had said the cost was about $37 a barrel back in 04.
The story and what you should be talking about is why the cost per barrel have gone up and what can be done for the cost to come down.
You said you hate tax increases.
What do you think the increased cost of oil is to the average folks?
This is a big drain in the country.
Come on, Rush, you're getting out of touch.
You need to be looking out for the citizens.
This is from Keith Turnbaugh from uh Overland Park, Kansas.
Why does this always happen to me?
Why is it that I am always the guy accused of being out of touch?
You know, I'm an I uh one of the things that Keith, you just you have to know something here.
There's been an active policy on this program since before it began.
And that is we don't complain about the phone bill or the electric bill going up because they always do.
And there's nothing I can do about it anyway, other than pay it.
If I want to continue to have phone service and light.
And of course, air conditioning here in South Florida year round.
Now, when it comes to the barrel price of oil, what do you mean it shouldn't be 70 bucks?
Who says it shouldn't be 70 bucks?
It is what it is.
The fact of the matter is, Keith, that the price of gasoline today, uh and the price of oil, the price of oil would have to go over $90 a barrel in order to be the most expensive it's ever been.
During the Carter years, as a percentage of family income, the price of gasoline was much higher than it is today.
And by the way, we had the economy to show it.
We had a malaise, we had a misery index, we had inflation at the wazoo, unemployment at the wazoo, interest rates out the wazoo, none of that exists today.
We've got in fact, the Federal Reserve Board, the minutes that were leaked yesterday that caused the stock market to go nuts.
In one of the um in one of the discussions they had in the in the meeting, they were all amazed that the the price of energy has not affected core inflation in this country.
Hence reason why they're gonna Stop raising the interest rates very soon, and that's why the market's skyrocketed, because the price of energy is not having a co effect on the core inflation rate.
It's not skyrocketing.
Now, I when it when it comes to the price of barrel shouldn't be 70 bucks.
Go talk to OPEC.
Go talk to the speculators.
Go talk to the people who are driving it up.
Go talk to the people who are bidding the price up on the on the on the commodities market under this notion that they're afraid of an eventual war between Iran and the United States, which would affect supplies.
You know, the fact that uh the cost shouldn't be at 70 bucks a barrel, uh, and that it was $37 a barrel back in uh uh 19 or 2004 ignores the fact, you know, we've got the Chinese, the ChICOM uh president had dinner with Bill Gates last night.
He's bowing today.
He's touring Boeing there, he's gonna buy uh somebody 80 or 5737s.
Go talk.
He's gonna come to uh Washington tomorrow.
He's gonna talk to President Bush, and one of the big topics is gonna be oil.
Because they are an expanding economy.
In fact, there's a there's a UK newspaper today says it's over for America, that the uh Chinese economy is gonna soon become the world's largest because they're modernizing and because of their population.
They're consuming a lot of oil over there, they're buying a lot of cars, Keith.
Supply and demand.
You know, the world does not orient itself around the U.S. consumer and the U.S. consumers day-to-day upset at prices.
The U.S. consumer affects it by his activity, not his attitudes.
You might say the attitudes intertwine with the activity, but the price that something shouldn't be this price, and then you start talking about the profits that the that the uh oil companies make and that there's got to be gouging going on.
I've heard this my whole life.
I've heard this about so many industries my whole life.
It's amazing how the usual conspiracy theories do not change.
But what I'm actually trying to do here, Keith, is is not, as you say, stand up for the consumer, defend the I'm trying to explain it to you.
I'm not trying to defend it.
I don't think capitalism needs to be defended, as I've said previously.
I'm just explaining it.
Because by rights, if you look at all of the numbers that go into calculating the price of uh gasoline per gallon at the at the pump, it ought to be $3.70 right now, and it isn't.
In other words, if the oil companies want, if there was some guy somewhere behind the curtain who actually did set the gasoline price, and let's not forget the EPA.
How many stupid formulations do we have in this country based on regions?
You gotta have a certain kind for Chicago, gotta have a certain formulation for California, to have a certain formulation for New York.
What do you think the expenses in a gallon of gasoline uh are because of those different formulations that are required at the refinery process?
What do you think about distribution costs?
Remember after Hurricane Katrina, the government suspended those requirements so that any gasoline could go anywhere.
And it worked.
It kept the price, it brought the price down.
It was a classic demonstration of the one of the factors in the setting of the uh price of gasoline.
And the government's involved, not just with taxes, but all these EPA regulations on formulations for pollution and and this sort of stuff.
And I might add the fact that we're cleaning up our air so well means that there's more global warming.
We can't win no matter what we do, right?
We're killing ourselves.
No matter what we do wrong, we're killing ourselves.
But uh I I'm I I'm not out of touch, and I'm not a consumer, champ.
I mean, I'm I'm not, I don't I don't come here and start championing the cause of the consumer.
That would be demagoguery, that'd be phony baloney.
These people that go on their shows and say they're they're standing up for you, and then they're gonna make you're gonna find out who's gouging you and so forth.
That's all demagoguery.
It's all phony baloney, plastic banana, good time rock and roll stuff.
It's one of the oldest tricks in media.
It's moistening your finger, sticking it up in the air, figuring out which way the winds are blowing.
In this case, if somebody suspects that consumers are outraged over the price of gas, the demagogue host will say, Boy, I can score big on this.
I'll act mad too.
And I'll make them think I'm on there saying, I'm gonna lead the effort to bring the price.
I'm gonna find out who's behind all that.
And you get sucked in, lured into it, and you think you've got an advocate.
Uh what you've got's a demagogue.
And I, L. Rushbow am no demagogue.
I'm checking this out.
Um I'm told the average United States taxes per gallon 46 cents.
The New York State tax per gallon is 62 cents.
I've been told this, we're we're we're trying to source this now to see if that's uh if that's accurate.
Wouldn't be surprised if it uh if it's true.
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