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April 21, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:32
April 21, 2006, Friday, Hour #3
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So there were some protests of who at Yale, but they were outside wherever he was speaking.
They weren't inside.
We don't.
Because didn't didn't didn't uh didn't a bunch of professors turn their backs on Bush when he spoke at Yale uh at some point.
We went back there.
Remember that?
I I can't imagine a bunch of Yale professors turning their back on a communist.
I can imagine especially they got that Taliban student there.
And why not welcome who?
Friday, folks, let's keep rolling.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's open line Friday.
Basically, open line Friday means that when we go to the show, uh go to phones, it's your show.
Monday through Thursday, we talk about what uh interests me, and that's it.
On Friday, when we go to the phones, you can.
I mean, you can go for it.
800-282-2882, and the email address is rush at EIBNet.com.
Let's go uh a couple of uh audio sound by in fact uh maybe more than that.
We'll start with number four here.
The uh C-SPAN Washington Journal today, the Brian Lamb was hosting, and he had CBS News uh Pentagon correspondent David Martin on.
And Brian Lamb said to him, you know, you've been at the Pentagon since 1983.
Sounds like a strange question, but of all the secretaries of defense you've seen, who's the toughest?
Rumsfeld.
Really?
Easy.
Easy, yeah.
Who was the I don't know if you want to answer this, the weakest.
Les Aspen.
Former Congressman from Wisconsin.
Yes.
Yes.
Why was he weak?
He uh, you know, I I hesitate to speak ill of people who have uh passed on, but um he simply did not have the executive abilities needed to run a large organization like the Pentagon.
So really uh CBS Pentagon correspondent David Martin says Rumsfeld is the toughest Secretary of Defense he's seen.
Wonder how many stories on Rumsfeld needs to go, they ran at CBS.
And I don't like people dumping on Les Aspen.
Les Aspen's a guy that put this program on Armed Forces radio.
He was a Secretary of Defense when that happened.
Ended up calling us on the television show to announce a decision to talk about it.
Remember that.
Uh I in fact, yeah, I was the right-in candidate.
The armed forces sent out a uh uh a ballot with uh about 25 names on it to the troops.
Who do you want to see?
And uh uh I got more votes than anybody.
I wasn't on the ballot.
So they put the program on that caused all kinds of havoc, and uh then they say they weren't gonna put it on and uh and find less aspirin interstitious.
We're gonna do it.
Next question from Brian Lamb.
When the dust clears on Rumsfeld, does it say that nobody can change the Pentagon significantly when the military is against you?
Yes, he has changed the Pentagon significantly.
Give me the biggest thing he's done.
Well, this whole um move toward uh uh special operations forces is just one example.
I mean, he he'll tick them off uh uh changing the uh the personnel system.
If you were to aggregate all these different changes, which you can enumerate uh uh for uh hours on end, it really has been that he has rejected the cookie-cutter way of uh running the Pentagon, where everybody uh goes through the standard hoops, and at the end of the day you you come out with with a uh decision.
I find this fascinating.
Here's the CBS News Pentagon correspondent uh telling a story of Rumsfeld that is highly uh positive.
Uh very positive testimonial about the guy.
I uh seriously, I'm just wondering.
I don't watch the CBS News, so I I shouldn't say that.
I don't know if if uh Martin David Martin has said this on his own network, or if he's just said it on the C-Span.
I just think well, you know, the drive-by media, this this this whole get Rumsfeld thing, they were all on board get rid of Rumsfeld, generals this, generals that.
You know, a whole different take here when he goes on, not as a journalist, but just as a well, not as a reporter, but uh somebody being interviewed.
I don't know if it's different than his take uh when he was reporting, so I I'm not speculating on that.
Let's go to gasoline and oil prices Because folks, it's what is $75 a barrel now.
The price of oil per barrel has gone up almost three bucks since this show started.
It was at 72 or something like that two hours ago.
Now it's up to 75.
Last night on Lou Dobbs tonight, Kenny Pilgrim, guest host edding, and she was talking to uh Vermont socialist Bernie Sanders.
They question an emergency energy summit.
I think most Americans would say it's about time.
That price at the pump's absolutely punitive right now.
What do you hope to accomplish with a summit?
What I hope will happen is that we can force the President of the United States to look his friends in the oil industry right in the eye and say, gentlemen, stop ripping off the American people, lower the price of gas.
It is an obscenity.
It is an obscenity that at a time when the profits of the oil industry are at an all-time high, when they're laughing at the American people when ExxonMobil gives a $398 million retirement package to their CEO, Oh.
I think it's time that the President of the United States and the Congressional leadership said, enough is enough.
Lower gas prices.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Call summit and bring Lee Raymond in and all these oil executives and say lower the price.
The American people are not going to take it anymore.
As I've always said, if I were the oil company executives, I'd have my own hearings and I'd bring people like Bernie Sanders in.
And say, why are you doing everything you're doing to cost our business its lifeblood?
Why are you standing in our way of producing our own sources of crude?
Why are you making it impossible for us to service the market as it wishes to be serviced?
The restrictions you're placing on us are outrageous.
I would love to see those hearings.
Of course, those hearings will never happen.
I would also love to see these hearings.
I would love to see a Congress, Congressional Committee bring in the big labor leaders at the United Auto Workers.
What do you mean making General Motors pay 14,000, 17,000 workers between $100 and $140,000 a year to do nothing?
Do you realize that's costing General Motors $900 million a year?
Is it million or billionaire?
It'd be $900 million a year.
Yeah, we're paying Lee Raymond $398 or $400 million, but his company's profitable.
The autumn workers at General Motors and General Motors itself is not profitable.
Why do we have to sit here and make sure that a company loses $1,200 per car?
I guess liberals find that okay.
It's okay if a company loses $1,200 per car, no matter what the price of the car, because then they can't ever claim that they're gouging the American consumer at the sticker.
Here.
Next question from Kitty Pilgrim.
Well, let's talk about some of the tax breaks the oil companies get.
Should we be addressing that?
Can the president do it?
Of course he can do it.
If he brought these guys into the oil industry and says, guess what?
We're going to take away all of the corporate welfare that taxpayers give you.
We're going to impose on you a windfall profits tax.
We're going to have Congress give the president the authority to impose temporary price controls on the price of oil.
Do you think if the president said that you do not think that the next day gas prices would go down?
Hold on.
Stop the tapes.
What do you mean?
We're going to get the president the authority to impose temporary price controls on the price of oil.
Who does he think he is?
Who does he think the president is when it comes to the price of oil?
The president Okay, I see this.
George Bush goes to the oval office.
Big time prime time national speech.
I'm today announcing a freeze and price controls on oil.
Our friends in the United Arab Emirates, our friends in Iran, our friends in the Saudi Arabia peninsula, our friends all over the world of Venezuela have agreed with me that they will lower the price of oil to fifty dollars a come on.
Bernie, this is here's the risk.
This is absurd.
This is a social windfall profits tax.
All these things have been tried, by the way, and they always fail.
These guys are doing it because they can do it.
They are getting away with murder because we're allowing them to get away with murder, And it's high time that the White House stood up for the American people rather than their buddies in the oil industry.
Right.
And of course, these questions are really top drawer too.
Um let's talk about some of the tax break the oil companies get.
Uh ExxonMobil paid twenty-three billion dollars in taxes.
Uh and of course that they didn't, actually, we do.
But that nevertheless, uh next question.
Congressman Sanders, last word, and you know it has to be pretty tough going in the home front these days with the consumers being so hurt in the pocketbook.
Absolutely.
This is part of the destruction of the middle class.
Money is coming right out of the pockets of working people.
I think when Peter and I get back on Tuesday, you're gonna find not only many Democrats, but a lot of Republicans saying, hey, we have got to do something.
You know what?
There's an election coming in six and a half months, and a lot of these wh guys want to get re-elected.
Here's an idea.
Give Bernie Sanders four hundred million dollars and let him provide the stuff at a lower price.
Bernie, we're gonna put you in charge of the oil business.
They're gonna pay you four hundred million dollars a year.
You go fix it.
Notice how Bernie wants the president to do everything.
Uh he's right about one thing.
Uh the the politics of this are such that that this is this this is gonna be a major brew ha-ha.
Republicans and Democrats are gonna start belly aching and moaning all over the place about this.
It may get to the point, folks.
I'll even have to act like I'm mad about it.
Back in just a second.
You know, seriously, this gas price business.
That's that's uh we sh we have the chart earlier this week.
We put it on the website.
Uh the the price of gas going up parallels Bush's approval numbers going down.
And if the Republicans are trying to find out why the American people do not think of this as a as a strong economy, just take a look at the gasoline prices.
And that that since last uh September at Hurricane Katrina, I mean that's when you can trace all this to, and and whatever the we'll get this story here.
So Madison, Wisconsin, gas stations.
Gas stations in Madison, Wisconsin.
There's a bunch of libs up there.
You'd think they'd be happy to pay higher prices because they've been urging them on everybody.
Uh gas stations in Madison charging nearly three dollars a gallon for unleaded, which is driving some residents to open their garages, attics, and jewelry stores for extra gasoline money.
They're turning to pawn shops, folks, in Madison, Wisconsin.
People are selling treasured items from their from their past in order to get gasoline money.
Steve Shapiro spent thirty-eight bucks on thirteen gallons of gas at a marathon station in uh in uh Madison on uh Thursday, said he had recently shortened his commute to save some cash.
That was actually the exact reason I moved last summer when gas prices were high.
At Rick's old gold on William Street, the owner's seen a recent increase in people selling things for long trips.
Yeah, just a few weeks ago, a guy was gonna go to Milwaukee.
He had a little piece of scrap gold.
It looked like it was a broken gold pendant, worth about fifteen bucks in gold, so I offered him about twelve.
That's not enough gas.
I'm going to Milwaukee, the owner said.
He needed more than twelve bucks to fill up to go to Milwaukee.
They only said that uh people have been selling things at his shop for a long time to get gas money.
Rick's old gold, by the way, is not a gas station to pawn shop.
People sell a lot of gold bands, little gold coins, silver rings.
People always think that they can sell a silver ring and get gas money, but the little silver rings that you pay twenty-five or thirty bucks for are worth fifty cents or a dollar worth of silver, maybe.
You gotta go for gold.
Here's uh Joe in Cleveland.
By the way, I just got a note here, and I don't have any substantiation.
Joe, hang on here just a second.
Snodley, see if you can get me the details on this.
Apparently uh Yale kicked the CNN reporter out of the Who speech because he asked him a question.
Now, I just got a note on this.
I haven't seen anything on it.
Uh see if you can find something about that.
Joe in Cleveland, thanks for waiting.
Welcome to the program.
Thank you, Rush.
Megadethos.
Thank you.
You've been listening since about eighty-nine.
Uh uh Oh, I appreciate that.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
Hey, I was just trying to draw a point that the media is not addressing, and that is the supply and demand of gasoline.
We're going into our oxygenated blends for summer.
They don't have the capability of of producing enough of them.
They already said several stations have run out near Jersey.
So you can drop the price to a buck ninety-nine tomorrow and give it three or four weeks, and they will have lines for uh stations that are out of gas.
You know, there are some stations out of gas uh uh in most of them, though, it's an ethanol uh delivery problem from what I understand.
Uh some of the stations uh selling ethanol mix uh in the in the gasoline.
But you know, that that's a i i it is an interesting point.
The government could, and we are heading into the summer driving season, a big memorial day weekend coming up right around the corner.
Uh it it it uh last year after Hurricane Katrina, they they removed all these regulations on formulations going to certain geographic areas.
In other words, gasoline produced anywhere, it can be sold anywhere.
And it reduced the uh distribution costs.
Uh by the way, that is a factor too.
You know, with the the oil companies have their own gasoline price to pay.
You know, those big uh those tanker trucks have to deliver the gas.
The gas doesn't just show up automatically in the in the in the pump.
Uh and uh as they're gonna put their costs of higher fuel to deliver the stuff uh into the wholesale cost as well.
So it if it's a lot of factors that that uh go into this.
But the government could do a whole lot, could suspend taxes for a while.
But do you know, folks, it's never ever suggested that the government go without.
It's never suggested the government bite the bullet even for a month or two.
Never ever.
No, no, no, no, we gotta bring the oil company execs in, and we've got to blast them.
If all this money, by the way, were going to the oil companies.
Uh you wouldn't hear or so the government, rather, you wouldn't hear any complaints about it from government people.
Consumers would still be complaining.
By the way, Bernie Sanders complaining about uh Lee Raymond's retirement package.
You know what I'd like to find out what his congressional pension and retirement plan is going to add up to.
You know, these guys in Congress have an incredible retirement plan, incredible pension plan.
And I w I'd just like to see what Bernie's gonna end up with.
But uh short of that, you know, give him four hundred million dollars and say, here, you're you're your CEO of Exxon Mobile.
Now go do what's necessary to get the gasoline to the pump at the uh at the at the best price possible, Bernie, go do it.
You know all about it, you know how it's done, go do it.
Uh you go in there and find out where they're gouging us, go in there and find out where they're making suckers out of us and playing us for fools and stop it, Bernie.
Just go in there and do it.
We'll give you four hundred million bucks to go fix it out.
You think he'd uh fix it up?
You think he'd take me up on the offer?
No, he'd be embarrassed to have anybody know we earned that money.
He'd take it if he could get it on the slide.
Linda in Kingston, Pennsylvania, welcome to the program.
Hi, Rush.
I called a thank you.
I've been listening to you for 15 years, and you have absolved me of my class envy.
I'm listening to all these people, they're griping and they're grumbling and they're giving themselves indigestion because the oil companies are making so much money, and Mr. Raymond, he had the education and the experience.
He had a contract.
He's allowed to make his money.
And I don't have to be upset.
Now I'm poor.
I'm officially a poor person.
Any scale you want to use, poor little crippled woman, and yet I can go on living my life without being upset.
And just I want to applaud you.
You're you're giving me the credit, but you did it.
And I I want to applaud you because what you ultimately figured out is that let's say we put a bunch of oil company execs in jail, and let's say we take away uh uh Lee Raymond's four hundred million or reduce it to five million or five fifty thousand or whatever.
What you know is it's not gonna change your economic circumstances at all.
No, the electric bill still isn't gonna get paid this month.
Maybe next month.
That's exactly right.
It's exactly right.
Well, but it's more than that.
I don't have to get upset about it.
I can that like I said, they're giving themselves indigestion, I'm eating spicy food.
Well, I can live my life very happy and saying, yes, I wish I was rich too.
Maybe that'll happen.
I'll try to work it out.
But I don't have that to have that that black anger and jealousy and envy.
Well, I applaud you because those are just those are just destructive emotions.
They're just however, I have to say, uh, in this case, the the the when you I I look at I remember when this all first started.
I got my first car when I was uh what was I?
I think I was seventeen.
No, I was eighteen when I bought my first car.
I bought my first car.
And gasoline was twenty-eight cents, and uh shortly after it was a Pontiac Le Mans.
And shortly after that Uh came the that was 1969.
Shortly after that came the first round of contrived shortages.
And and I I left home at age twenty and went to Pittsburgh and started working.
I was earning 175 bucks a week.
And man, I'll tell you, those those gasoline prices uh going up was the biggest crimp in the budget, and it is the same thing today.
It doesn't do any good to tell people, hey, prices are not nearly as high as a percentage of uh income as they have been in the past.
It was much worse than this on your budget in 79 or 80.
Well, it's a long time ago.
People don't remember it.
Now is what counts, and the future is what counts, and all they know is the price seems out of control.
They don't understand why the price goes from 65 to 75 in a matter of days.
Uh and it's it's hard to explain it uh to people.
It has to it has to do a lot, folks, with dependence on other people for the product.
Oh, yeah.
Hang on here, folks.
Hang on.
Just oh this.
Okay, the Pugh Center for the People in the Press um headline, public disillusionment with Congress at record levels, anti-incumbent sentiment.
Echoes 1994.
Uh public approval levels for Congress are lower than uh than they are for President Bush.
May not bode all that well for Republicans, but I'm not I'm not I have not hit the panic button on this like everybody else has.
But folks, I want to run something by you.
I want to get back to oil here for a second.
I got some Senator Kennedy soundbites coming up.
Do you remember the first Gulf War?
I'm sure you remember the first Gulf War.
First Gulf War, uh the Libs came up with this notion.
I don't think it makes any sense to go to go to war for oil.
We were amassing troops in Kuwait.
We were preparing for the uh eventual use of force in January, and it was to kick Saddam out of Kuwait and get him back to Baghdad and and to save the Kuwaiti oil fields.
The theory was Saddam was on the march to Saudi Arabia.
Uh and at the time he said, This is not worth it.
You don't go to war for oil.
And when this war in Iraq started, same thing.
He had all these conspiracy theories, he had all these charges that all Bush was doing were just trying to go get oil.
He was just trying to co-opt the Iraqi oil fields for himself and his buddies in the oil business, Dick Cheney and Halliburton, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Now, my question is this.
How can these people now start complaining and whining and moaning about the price of oil when they say it's not worth fighting for or securing the free flow of oil at market prices, even if that's what the war in Kuwait was about in the uh uh uh first Gulf War, and it was an element of the free flow of oil at market prices.
Everybody knows that's important.
You let Saddam get hold of the world's oil supply back then it would become what it is today.
The free flow of oil at market prices is a fundamental concern of every nation on this planet, including the Chicoms.
Yet the American left finds that offensive.
That you'd go to war for that, yet here they are.
Now in a tizzy.
Because the price of oil's got demanding that Bush do something about it.
They're demanding that Bush punish the oil companies and demanding that Bush go do something.
Uh we can't let them have it both ways on this.
If they're either going to say that oil is not worth it, and in which case everything they say after that gets discarded as irrelevant because they're being disingenuous at best, dishonest at worst.
I find them hypocritical as hell.
Now, who is it that all the whining and moaning and complaining about oil?
I don't care if they're doing it for political purposes.
The fact is, in the past, they, when we were faced with crises when it came to the supply of oil, they have let it be known that we can't count on them to do anything about it except go after the oil companies.
The oil companies don't own most of the oil from where we get our oil.
They don't own Venezuela, they don't own Saudi Arabia.
They can't drill very much in the United States because it that market's been shut out to them by the environmentalist wackos.
In that vein, let's go to Senator Kennedy.
Where was he?
Was on American Morning today on CNN.
Uh The anchorette was Betty Wynn, and the question is this gas prices, something that's hitting every single person.
The President ought to have the leading oil companies in the White House jawboning them.
Those elitist about asking what they're doing to try to get a handle on prices.
He ought to be directing the Federal Trade Commission to do an investigation to find out if there's price gouging, and he ought to send to the Congress legislation that is going to uh uh provide additional kinds of taxes for s excess profits by the gas uh companies return to working families.
All right.
So uh what what is Senator Kennedy essentially mumbling about here?
He says, Well, Bush needs to jawbone the oil companies.
We're back to the Ted Kennedy uh and John Kerry plan.
He needs a jawbone the oil companies.
It carries a jawbone to Saudi's.
We ought to repeal their tax breaks.
Return the money to working families.
Well, how about this, Senator?
How about we jawbone you and the federal government and repeal all these gas taxes for a time when prices get to the point that it's hard for people to absorb, and return working families their own money.
That's the way we look at this, Senator.
You want to go after the oil companies, we want to go after you.
You're the gougers.
You're the ones making out big time.
As these prices go up, so do your taxes.
Repeal them temporarily.
Repeal them for a length of time that it would make a real difference to people and return people their own money.
Because, Senator, you know damn good and well that repealing these tax breaks to big oil.
How's big oil going to give money back to people?
When in fact it's the government that's taking everybody's money, and it's the government that ought to be giving it back during times of crisis.
Last night on Larry King Alive.
He's talking about uh about Iraq.
King says you called Iraq the overriding issue.
You voted to go there or not.
No, I the best vote I cast in the United States uh Senate uh was the best vote.
Best vote I cast in the United States Senate was time.
Yeah, absolutely.
Was not to go to a why did you vote against?
We had Wes Clark uh testified in opposition to uh going to war at that time.
You had General Zinney, uh you had General Hoare, uh, you had General Nash, you had the series of different uh military officials, a number of whom have been involved in the Gulf One War, others involved in Kosovo and had had distinguished records in uh in Vietnam, uh battle-hardened uh combat military figures.
And virtually all of them said no, this is not going to work.
Yeah.
Uh well, Senator, we can go back and we can find uh General Zinney sounding the warning bells before Congress in 2000 about about I'm I don't want to play any more, Senator Kennedy.
I'm just I'm just in fact, let's do.
I got we got to play this one.
Uh because those of you who have your history uh intact, this will make you sick.
Uh King is interviewing Ted Kennedy.
Uh and and uh King says, this book, America Back on Track, uh not just about politics, your father's in it.
What's the angle there?
One of the uh very wonderful uh uh letters that I had.
They my father was a uh uh wonderful letter writer to all the members, large family, nine of us.
And uh when I was eight years old, I make a reference to the letter that uh he wrote me, and he was in London.
He had ambassador to to London and the war was on, and uh I had been over there and sent home when the bombing really intensified in London and uh and he wrote me a letter about uh the bombing and about how it was destroying people's lives and and uh how he uh would hope that uh when I grew up that you know you could work to try and avoid the wars and try and work to lessen the kinds of of uh suffering that people would have as a result
of conflict and war.
Still my beating heart.
Grab me the stratavarius so I can start making everybody cry.
Uh Now the historical note that I referred to is Ted Kennedy referring to his dad old Joe, writing him a letter from London during the World War II, telling him to work hard when he grew up to stop wars.
What he leaves out was that his father was on the side of the Nazis for a time.
He got the thrown.
He was yeah, the ambassador of court of St. James got thrown out because he was uh sympathizing uh with the uh with the Nazis with Hitler.
Okay, typical.
All right, here are the details.
Uh CNN reporter has indeed been ejected from a private reception at Yale for the uh Chicom leader, uh President Who.
Uh President Who wrapped up his four-day U.S. tour Friday with a visit to Yale where he sought to quell fears about the international effects of his country's booming economy and pledged continued cooperation with the uh United States.
He uh opened his speech by quipping, if time can go back several decades, I would really like to be a student of Yale, just like you.
Oh, he chose to end his first U.S. uh visit uh with the president at Yale, a university long uh standing ties to China that have grown stronger in recent years.
This is an AP story.
CNN reporter was thrown out of a private reception in Yale President Richard Levin's office after he shouted a question about whether Who had seen more than a thousand protesters gathered on the city green.
President Who, did you see all those prototypes?
We don't care if you are from CNN.
Get out of here.
Yale spokeswoman Helene Kalski said the reporter was thrown out because we invited you to cover an event, not to hold a press conference.
She said the event was only meant to be a photo op and ceremony.
Quick time out, folks, back right after this.
Quick, Mr. Sturdley, what's the name of the group here on the bump?
Nope, average white band.
Average white band.
Wonder if a band could call themselves that today.
Uh it is hurtful uh to have that kind of great uh RB beat and to be called a white band, uh average or otherwise.
Dave in El Paso, Texas, welcome to the program.
Honor Professor Rush, and it was called Pick Up the Pieces.
That's right.
I was a student of yours since I was stationed in the submarine base there at Pearl Harbor since the early 90s, watching you on TV.
It's been an honor, and uh I'm honored to talk to you, sir.
Thank you, sir, very much.
I appreciate that.
Uh the the question is in honor of guess who was coming to D.C. yesterday, I noticed when the Capitol Police were, you know, manhandling and inappropriately touching that Chicum war protester, and you know, especially to an Asian minority.
Did you think if she would have hauled off and hit that with uh you know the Capitol Policeman with a McKinney kung poop bunch, all charges would have been dropped?
Uh no.
Have they been dropped in Cynthia McKinney's case?
Well, you know, it's it's been two weeks, I think.
No, that I no, I I think that's still heating up.
In fact, I I think the latest on that is the cop is he's come forward and he said that she hit him with an open fist, not a cell phone.
No, she's she's still on the hook for that.
Uh this woman was just charged today, uh, the Falun Gong protester.
Uh she's charged with a misdemeanor, intimidating a foreign dignitary or some such thing, and if she's convicted, she could get up to six months in jail uh for this.
I think, Dave, uh the uh the real big question here is let's take what happened at Yale today.
You got a big reception for WHO up there.
And uh they let a CNN report, I'm sure there are a lot of reporters in there.
C and there were a thousand uh anti-Chinese anti-Who protesters out there in the somewhere, and then and and the uh CNN guys asked asked who if he saw him, and they kicked him out.
Now, what would what do you think and and I want to see what CNN does with this?
I I want to see how CNN handles this, because I'll tell you what, folks, if George W. Bush in a photo op, he generally takes questions during photo ops, by the way.
Took questions during a photo op with who yesterday in the Oval Office.
But uh you just know if there were a photo op only, and if a CNN reporter anybody else asked Bush a question about anything, hey, did you know Cindy She hands out if Bush had that reporter removed, that would be the end of it.
Impeachment proceedings, Violation of the First Amendment, breach of the Constitution, violation of the oath of office.
Let's throw the book at him.
You just know they would.
Here's uh Chris in San Diego.
Welcome to the program.
Nice to have you with us.
Hey, Rush, great to talk to you.
You know, I uh on the gas prices thing, you know, the only the only true hedge we have against high gas prices is competition.
And and getting the lawmakers involved in this is the the wrong direction.
We need to innovate, not legislate.
You know, Reagan Reagan always told us the genius of the American people never failed us.
We need to provide incentives for business so they'll make so it'll be cost effective for them to bring new products that'll burn in our cars and produce energy for our country uh so that so that we can have uh competition in the marketplace.
Now big oil paid a lot of money on the front end to to get to where they are today.
They they invested a lot, nobody was complaining, you know, when it was fifteen cents a gallon way back when back twenty years ago it was ten bucks a barrel.
Nobody from Washington called the uh big oil companies, hey, you guys need some help, it's gotta be tough times for you out there.
So sit back, admire the nice business model that the that the uh oil companies have laid out and create a new dynamic.
Compete.
Yeah, well, you gotta you know what your big problem with that is environmentalist wackos and the Democratic Party.
The Democratic Party wants big oil to beat up on.
That's how they show solidarity with the beleaguered consumer.
And now this latest mantra, we're losing the middle class.
We're losing the middle class.
And people are gonna believe that.
Not about themselves, because the people in the middle class can say, I'm doing okay, but I'm worried about here we're losing the middle class, I'm worried about my neighbor.
Um blah, blah, blah, blah.
Bottom bottom line is uh, folks, that there's no question that uh, you know, offering incentives, rewarding success instead of punishing it, uh, would do great things, but that's going to involve allowing them to explore offshore and war.
Environmentalists aren't gonna let it have the same people whining and moaning about these high prices are not going to let it happen.
Uh they are the obstacle.
The oil companies are really not the problem here, particularly when the barrel price 75 bucks ago.
Big oil does not set that price, folks.
Big oil does not set the price contrary to what you think.
Look, we got some immigration news.
I want to pass this on before we have to get out of here today.
LA Times nationwide raids intensify focus on the employment of illegal immigrants.
A single-day record in illegals busted at business.
Raids set a record for workplace enforcement arrests in a single day.
Immigration officials announced yesterday they had taken over eleven hundred illegal immigrants into custody at wood products plants in twenty-six states and had charged seven company managers with crimes that can carry long-term prison sentences.
Uh this is this is uh this is very recent men at men say that they're gonna build a wall on the force or on the border.
Uh the president, Chris Simcock, said that six landowners and two construction companies have partnered with the with the Menet Men to break ground and begin construction on a state-of-the-art security fence similar to one proposed last year by a group in Pennsylvania.
It says, Look, we can do it cheaper, we can do it more economically, and we're gonna do it.
We're gonna show the federal government how it should be done and how it can be done.
And as uh all these raids and all this focus on uh on people that employ illegals, don't think for a moment that election year politics is uh it doesn't have anything to do with this because it does.
They are hearing us.
Here we go.
Talent on loan from God, broadcast excellence.
Ill Rushbo to Wisconsin cell phone call from Scott.
Hello, sir.
Hey, Rush, uh, sorry if my phone goes out, but uh make a deados to you.
Thank you, sir.
Hey, uh, I'm in the service.
I've been in the service for uh well over ten years.
I've been to Iraq, Afghanistan, and a few other countries.
And uh oftentimes we as soldiers have always heard we support our troops.
And really I wanted to say thanks.
I want to say thanks to you, and I want to say thanks to uh other uh people, great Americans out there that do support the troops.
Oftentimes we hear people say, Yeah, we support the troops, but you know, when you're downrange, you're in the box, you never see anything except when it comes from like a church group or a conservative group.
You know, we never see like a representative uh uh uh a package from like Planned Parenthood or anything.
But you know what I'm saying?
We and uh I really wanted to say thanks.
There's uh a lot of people that I gotta stop you there.
I have to stop because of the the constraints of time here, but uh it is uh uh it's all of us who thank you.
Uh it's it's we who uh thank you.
You you you you all of you are doing things that ninety nine point nine percent of the country would not volunteer to do and you uh should trust the love and support that you hear from people 'cause they mean it.
Have a great weekend folks.
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