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April 26, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:13
April 26, 2006, Wednesday, Hour #3
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Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen.
Nice to have you.
America's anchor man and truth detector, general all-round good guy, harmless, lovable little fuzzball.
Rush Limbaugh, behind the golden EIB microphone at the prestigious and distinguished Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
I, of course, your highly trained broadcast specialist executing assigned host duties today flawlessly.
Zero mistakes.
Telephone numbers 800, 282-2882.
All right, now I know this is gonna make you mad.
Uh uh because you're gonna misunderstand this.
You're gonna think I'm trying to tell you, so what?
Gas prices are going up, don't sweat it.
You're gonna think I'm insensitive.
You're gonna think I don't have the ability to relate, that I am out of touch.
And it's not the case.
I just want to share something with you uh from Forbes magazine, just a little excerpt here.
It's all about this concept I was asking you about the other day.
Gas prices are going up, but driving is staying the same.
Uh interest rates are going up, but housing starts are at an all-time high.
We get constant news of doom and gloom in the economy, yet consumer confidence is at a four-year high.
And so I, with a natural abundance of curiosity, ask, how can this be?
Because if the news is accurate, if the hysteria in the drive-by media is accurate, most of you should have parked your cars or be trading them in for little small little junkyard things that get uh sixty miles to the gallon putt putting around, but that's not happening.
I mean it's happening in sporadic small instances.
What's more interesting about these stories is what they don't tell you.
For example, the Associated Press reports that surveys indicate drivers will not be easing off on their mileage using even more gasoline than a year ago.
Now, why is that?
If prices one expect consumers to use less.
Well, the answer might be in some of the long-term trends that the short-term media lens is too cramped to see.
Energy prices may be rising, but energy itself is much less important to consumers and the overall economy than it once was.
According to the Bureau of Economic Affairs, and they have a chart in the Forbes article, American consumer spending on energy as a fraction of total personal consumption.
And I mentioned this two weeks ago, and everybody poo-pooed me when I was talking about how gasoline prices today are not at their all-time high compared to the family budget.
That gasoline would have to get to four bucks or three and a half a gallon to get even close to that, oil would need to get set 90 bucks a barrel.
And everybody it doesn't matter, right?
Everything's humanity.
It may not be as high as it was in 1990.
It's still high.
Still hurts.
It has been worse.
And that's what that's what Forbes is saying here.
According to the Bureau of Economic Affairs, American consumer spending on energy is a fraction of total personal consumption has declined considerably since 1980, which was the high water mark.
Whereas 25 years ago, one in every 10 consumer dollars was spent on energy.
Today it's one in every sixteen dollars.
In other words, it takes what it takes to heat and cool our homes and drive to and from our jobs and vacation destinations, is relatively less costly than it was twenty-five years ago.
This goes a long way toward explaining why even when gas prices rise this summer, higher than they were throughout the 1990s, people will still be driving more.
It's much more of a value than it was a generation ago.
What's more, so-called energy intensity is declining rapidly.
That means that we produce more with less energy.
According to Economy.com, the U.S. economy has undergone major structural changes over the last 20 years, becoming more energy efficient, thus reducing its overall dependence on energy.
The energy intensity of the U.S. economy has declined by roughly 40% since the first oil crisis.
And that's as of uh 2001 numbers.
Uh uh, so what what what the writer here for Forbes is essentially Saying is that uh the answer to the question, even though prices are going up and people are unhappy about it, they're not cutting back on their driving because their budgets still accommodate it.
Budgets still accommodate it.
That they're spending far less of the family budget on energy today than they did 25 or 30 years ago.
Now Snerdley's in there laughing and smirking and so forth.
You don't believe this.
You don't oh, he's saying he can't wait to see the response I get from Well, you see, this is the point.
I may be wasting my breath.
I can I could I can mention this I'm blue in the face, and people are going to believe it because they don't want to believe it because it doesn't it doesn't fit the template.
The template is we're dying.
We're going to hell in a handbasket.
Gasoline price is out of control, we're being gouged, we're being cheated, nobody can do anything about it.
Uh, except that they say they're going to do anything about it, but we're not doing anything about it.
The price keeps going up, and I don't understand it.
It must mean the big oil companies are gouging me and blah, blah, blah, blah.
So I know it's hard to compete with uh uh an inertia.
Uh that start.
I that's you know, snurdly uh reminds me, it's exactly when I tried to explain ATM fees.
I I lost, even though I was dead right.
You know, what this what this all tells me is being right is not the answer.
And that's why I could never be a politician.
Can you imagine me running for office saying this on the campaign trail?
Essentially, what I'd be saying is, folks, life is what it is, free markets are what they are.
Stop complaining and understand that you've got it better off today than you had it 25 or 30 years ago in this particular economic sector.
And don't play along with all this doom and gloom.
You're making yourself feel bad over something that's not worth it.
Bye bye rush.
I mean, uh do a first poll, and uh, you know, I'd show up with a negative approval rating.
Uh, or what have you.
So sometimes it it doesn't uh it doesn't pay to be right.
Uh if it's not what people want, and see the problem is uh I don't moisten the fingers, stick it up in the air, and try to figure out what you want to hear and then say that.
Uh look at the port deal.
I mean, port deal is a uh is a classic.
Speaking of the port deal.
Following months of criticism about security gaps at the nation's seaports, uh Bush administration is now requiring background checks for port workers in order to find links to terrorism and ensure that they are illegal U.S. residents.
The heightened scrutiny, which will begin immediately, drew praise on Tuesday from some lawmakers and port associations that said the checks were long overdue.
Others jeered these measures as either too weak or too invasive of workers' privacy.
Names of an estimated 400,000 employees who work in the most sensitive areas of ports will be matched against government terror watch lists and immigration databases.
They will be among roughly uh 750,000 workers, including truckers and rail employees, who have unrestricted access to the ports, and will be required to carry tamper resistant ID cards by next year.
Michael Chertoff said, what this will do is it'll elevate security in our ports themselves so that we can be sure that those who enter the ports to do some business come from legitimate reasons and not in order to do us harm.
The background checks will not examine workers' criminal history, although Chertoff left open that possibility for the future.
Wait a minute.
They are going to do that.
We had that story earlier in the week on Monday, where they are going to be uh examining and and and uh the certain things are gonna disqualify you from uh working at the ports.
Uh if you're illegal, if you have uh felony convictions or something, but right, and they think right now there's so many of those that that to enforce this would would cause a severe shortage of employees at the ports.
Can you imagine if people in Dubai reading about all this at the United Air Emirates at Dubai ports world?
Uh how much the background checks will cost was not immediately available.
The Bush administration has been under fire, as we all know, for what critics call holes in security measures at the uh at the ports.
Cargo industry officials have worried that a federal ID system aimed at boosting security could cost many port workers their jobs, leading to bottlenecks in the flow of goods destined for virtually every U.S. community.
And from San Antonio, Texas, paramedics discovered an emaciated six week old girl and a 14 month old boy living with their mother and grandmother in a litter-filled SUV.
The mother, 18, and the grandmother, 40, each were charged with injury to a chow and endangering a chow after the Monday discovery at a day labor site.
The boy was released to child protective services.
The infant girl remains hospitalized.
Bond for the mother set at 45,000.
The grandmother's bond totaled a little over 50,000 because of outstanding warrants.
Authorities in San Antonio also investigating an abuse case of a woman who already has lost two kids to child protective services.
So here we have a case of an SUV providing shelter.
Some people back to the phones we go.
We uh Belair, Texas.
Ronnie, glad you call.
Welcome to the EIB network, sir.
Thank you, Rush.
Uh, it's actually it's a it's a girl.
Um thank you for taking my call.
That's right.
You know, I'm I'm sorry about that.
I misread the.
It happens all the time.
Uh I want to try to not be too nervous, but I want to uh respond to, I believe you had a somebody who said he was a professor that had a comment about uh if the government took the taxes off of a gallon of gasoline, that the energy companies would raise the price to match that.
Right.
Economically, they would have no reason to do that.
They would still get their six cents a gallon uh that they make as profit compared to forty, fifty cents that this the government gets per gallon.
Well, and if they took the taxes off, they would stand to even make more money at six cents a gallon because people would buy more gas.
Yes, you see, you the key, though, is that you said uh they would have no economic reason to do it.
The professor doesn't think economics play into this.
He thinks that the oil companies are gouging and that that that they would have an opportunity to to uh again gouge at that point.
Your economic analysis right on the money, but I don't think he's looking at it that way or was looking at it that way.
The other thing that scares me is that this is someone who is teaching our children.
Yeah.
Well, I got over that fright a long time ago when I realized how prevalent it was, and we just deal with it in different ways.
But uh yeah, I know it that is teaching law students, I think he said.
Better.
Well, I must have had a much better economics one teacher in college than he professes to be at law school.
You obviously did.
I'm actually more heartened by that than uh I mean, it's rare, and I don't mean this to as an ins insulting thing, it's rare that a uh a commoner, uh someone not an economist or not a professor of economics.
It's rare that just uh uh a person who took it as a class like you could call here and explain economic theory because I think it's so undertaught.
Uh but it's so easy.
It's the same thing as if you lowered the tax rate, the government is gonna get more taxes.
They're gonna make more money.
Uh yes, it works every time it's tried, but but there are st there's a there's a an institutional resistance to it.
Uh, and and generating money for the treasury is not what all this tax cut talk is about.
Uh the tax cut talk focuses on it's unfair to give the rich who don't need it any more money.
Why they've got enough.
Why cut their taxes?
Blah, blah, blah.
So it's all about class envy and and uh uh and playing on Shaden Freud.
It's it's it's it's simply a means by making people feel better, even though you don't do anything for them.
The whole tax cut lingo in this country is designed to make the middle class and others feel happy that the rich are getting soaked if it ever happens.
Meanwhile, their lives are not impacted positively at all, and in fact, may be impacted negatively by tax increases on the people who hire people in this country.
Speaking of which, give you a classic example of this, folks.
This is a story from yesterday.
Public citizen and united for a fair economy expose a stealth campaign of the super wealthy to repeal the federal estate tax.
Report identifies eighteen families behind multi-million dollar deceptive lobbying campaign.
The multimillion dollar lobbying effort to repeal the federal estate tax has been aggressively led by eighteen super wealthy families, according to a report released yesterday by Public Citizen and United for a Fair Economy at a press conference in Washington.
They report details for the first time.
The vast money, the vast influence, and deceptive marketing techniques behind the rhetoric in the campaign to repeal the tax.
It reveals how eighteen families, worth a total of 185.5 billion dollars, have financed and coordinated a 10-year effort to repeal the estate tax, a move that would collectively net them a windfall of 71.6 billion dollars.
The report profiles the families and their businesses, which include the families behind Walmart.
Gallo One, Campbell Soup, and Mars Incorporated, maker of MMs.
Collectively, the list includes the first and third largest privately held companies in America, the richest family in Alabama, and the world's largest retailer.
These families have sought to keep their activities anonymous by using associations to represent them and by forming a massive coalition of business and trade associations dedicated to pushing for estate tax repeal.
The report details the groups that they have uh hidden behind, the trade associations that they have used, the lobbyists they have hired, and the anti-estate tax political action committee 527's an organizations to which they have donated heavily.
Now, I don't know if you know this or not, folks, but this is not a secret.
This is not news.
What they're trying to say that the whole estate tax being repealed movement is led by the eighteen wealthiest families in America.
The rich want to get even richer.
The dirty little secret is that all kinds of people are for the repeal of the death tax that that are nowhere near the wealthiest of anything.
They're all for it.
A lot of people are.
This is simply a way of trying to kill the whole thing by saying that only 18 of the wealthiest American families are actually sponsoring this, secretly promoting this, and doing it to screw you while they enrich themselves to the tune of an aggregate 71.6 billion dollars.
I'm all for it.
I know Snerdley's all for it.
A lot of people are all for it.
And it it's it's actually pretty close.
And that's why this report's been published and why this press release has gone out.
And it's simply these are just a bunch of socialists.
Just a bunch of socialists.
Well, I um I no, I don't know if these 18 families are the new CFR replacing the CFR Council on Foreign Relations, maybe the trilateral commission, uh, but uh, but not the CFR.
Rooster in Bradenton, Florida, great to have you on the program, sir.
Rush, an honor to speak to you, sir.
Thank you.
Thank you for the.
Yeah.
But anyway, woo!
Anyway, uh Rush, you know, uh I'm gonna I'm I'm an employer.
I've got sixteen guys that work for me.
What do you do?
What do you want what do you do?
Uh uh I'm I'm a golf course superintendent, so you should love that.
Yes, I'll uh down here in Florida in the Sarasota area.
I'd rather not stay on the radio, which course.
That's okay.
But uh, but uh I've got sixteen fellows at work for me that decline health insurance.
They they've all come to me in the last few months complaining to me about wages with the gasoline.
It's hurting them so bad, yet almost every Monday, like clockwork, they're coming in to work.
You know, last week in a couple of them, they run at a couple limousines, went out clubbing all night, and I'm telling these guys at this young age.
Life is about priority.
You know, you're you're complaining to me about the extra 40 dollars a month it costs you to run your run your truck up and down the road.
Yeah, you're blowing 150 dollars every weekend doing this on things that are meaningless later in life.
When you look back, you're you're blowing this money and you're crying that somebody else needs to pick up your slack.
And you know, when I try to tell these guys this, you know, I try to be a fair boss and I try to explain these things to these guys and I try to not only be a boss but kind of be a life leader for them as well.
Are these illegal they haven't been around the block.
Are these guys illegal?
I I'm don't answer it.
Don't answer but they are don't answer don't answer it.
There's a new push on.
I'm just trying to be fine.
Hang on here, Rooster.
I got to take a break, but we'll cock a doodle do when you get back.
We are back.
El Rush Ball, talent on loan from God.
And I go back to uh Rooster in uh in Bradenton, Florida.
You know, I had to hurry you through that, Rooster, and I I wanted to spend a little bit more time with you because what you said makes a lot of sense.
But I had to ask you a question about these you said they they elected not to take health insurance.
That is true.
They've elected not to take health insurance.
How do you these are young guys then, right?
They're they're young guys.
And you know when I was 20 years old I thought I was a mortal as well.
I never thought anything bad would happen.
So so I can understand that decision in a way.
You know, I mean I think when we're all young we're all young kind of dumb and stupid but but I think the times being what they are I I think we just have to I mean you know uh kids are growing up faster these days.
So as kids grow faster I think you have to mature faster as well once you reach that 18 at adulthood.
The world being what it is you have to mature faster.
You have to look at things in a different light.
You know I I you know me and my wife and in a way you know because the gas isn't killing us we're making sacrifices we do a few little different things but we're also looking at the positives.
You know we we bought we bought a pound of gold the other day because we're thinking that it's a good investment you know I mean inflation's tied in with the oil which is tied into gold which you know I mean you have to do smart things.
These kids kids are not doing smart things.
Wait.
They're not doing smart things.
You bought a pound of gold or an ounce?
We bought a pound.
We bought 16 Cougar ams.
16 Cougar ams.
It's 620 an ounce.
And we're hoping for $1,000.
Oh, well, okay.
All right.
I understand.
Yeah.
Well, what you told the kids is exactly right.
How old are they?
They're 18, 20 years old soon.
They're 18 to 25.
And they complain about the gas price and how much it costs them to get to and from work, and they want to raise.
And you spot them out there hiring limousines.
out hiring they're clubbing every weekend they're drinking their money away you know I I mean let alone that alcohol's a bad thing in itself I mean in itself I mean that's another bad choice that they're making you know and I don't want to get on a moral high ground here but you know we've all done our thing but I'm you know I and it's great that you you know you I've listened to you since I was 18 years old.
I'm 36 years old now I've listened to you and when I used to ride route sales and you changed as an 18, 19, 20 year old hooligan that I was listening to you every day, I give credit to him my mother to this day still gives credit that listening to you made me a better person, Rush, just by listening to you every day.
And so I tried, you know, and I'm not like I say I'm I'm not perfect but I try to do the same things for these guys as what you did for me and probably millions of others at my age at that time you know coming out of the Reagan years and really you know put a good fiber to us I think is what you've done.
And I think it's great for anybody in my position who has younger people working for him to do this for them, to try to steer them in a good way.
Oh, thank you.
You know, this, you are proving, you are proving something I have always said, because I remember the conversations that you probably are referring to.
And it was, those conversations usually had to do with, despite all of the debauchery and depravity that is around, go ahead and live your life the best way you can.
Always try to do the best thing and the right thing.
You never know.
I mean, you're not going to always succeed.
Nobody ever has.
But you'll never know at the process and at the end.
at the time who all you're influencing the best way to influence people is live your life the way you think you should and stand up for your principles and don't waver and that more people than you will ever know will see it and they'll be uh affected by it and some of them will be inspired by it others won't but a lot more than you will ever know.
So my question is do you think you're getting through to these guys?
A few of them I think I have a few of this I've had, and believe me, Rush, I've had a few of them that have worked for me for almost five years now, okay?
And I've watched them change over these years.
I've watched them mature.
I remember when they came in how they were.
Okay.
I remember these things, and I've seen how they've changed.
You know, and and I think I am.
And the younger ones, and I and I tell you what, and and and you know, and like I say, we have the I I eat lunches with my guys every day.
I'm I'm not an elite if it's with my crew.
I eat lunch with these guys every day.
We discuss issues every day, we talk about things every day.
And it is just and I really do.
I think I have gotten through.
And you know what, and it used to be it was funny because they used to think, well, I remember telling guys that I was a Republican.
They'd asked me about it, you know, during the elections and stuff.
And I'd tell them, and they they couldn't believe it.
And they're like, you know, but they you know, they they have this this image that we're all just so hard-hearted and evil and and and and and we hate everything and everybody that's not Lily White.
You know, I mean, it it's just it was such a mindset, you know, and I think I've and a way I've gotten through.
But boy, I mean, on this, on this running around and and taking some responsibility as far as trying to tighten their own belts up and trying to show them how to make things a little easier on their pocket.
There's a little resistance, you know.
And and like I say, they're young, they've got hormones and this and that, but the earlier you start, the better you are.
Well, I'll tell you what, you're doing a Lord's work out there because uh uh mu uh most bosses would not devote this kind of time to their personal development and their character uh as you are.
Most uh it's it's most people are too busy.
You got you got these guys coming in and they want uh a raise for driving uh more gasoline's hires they got to drive and they and so forth.
Uh and and most people just say no, get out.
If you don't like this, go find something else.
But you've actually sat down and tried to help them understand things, and that's that's all you can do, and I guarantee you you're probably affecting all of them.
It's just you'll you're never gonna know to what extent.
But don't be surprised if ten or fifteen years from now, one of these guys comes back to you when he owns a golf course uh and uh tells you how much uh the time you spent with him uh helped him out.
I have as I am doing now with you, thank you, sir.
And Rush, do me one favor.
What's that?
Give me a woo for the Soul Patrol.
Come on, Russ.
Give me a woo.
Come on.
Come on, Rush.
I can't do it.
Thank you, Russ.
I can't do it.
I'm gonna let the Soul Patrol is uh is yours.
You gave them the woo, and uh that's what counts.
Well, I'm glad glad you call.
Great to have you uh uh in the audience and keep doing what you're doing.
That's that is just uh that's tremendous.
It's probably more than their parents at times in their lives have done.
And I r I remember well the period of time he's talking about uh when when he was eighteen and listening to this uh uh program.
It's that's gratifying.
Thanks.
Thanks again very much, Rooster.
Appreciate it.
All right, let before we get out of here today on this program.
I have to uh I have to mention here that uh despite the CIA's goal of cracking down on leaks of classified information, the government may forego criminal charges against Mary McCarthy.
The officials cited a number of obstacles pursuing the case, including that the employee was fired in part over polygraph results that would not be admissible as evidence, and that she was accused of leaking secrets the government would be reluctant to air in court.
The strength of the CIA's evidence against Mary McCarthy uh also has come under scrutiny.
McCarthy's attorney Ty Cobb said that the uh contrary to the CIA statement last week, she did not disclose classified information or confessed to doing so to agency investigators.
Now, if they're not gonna pursue her, if they're not gonna prosecute her, uh then she's safe in saying that.
Uh the agency's internal probe is part of a broader government campaign against leaks, and in recent months, uh FBI agents have interviewed a current uh or current and former Justice Department officials in connection with the NSA program, uh not domestic spying, but foreign surveillance.
This is the story that appeared uh in the New York Times by James Ryzen of the CIA yesterday, nevertheless defended the firing of Mary McCarthy, the veteran officer who was dismissed, and they challenged her lawyer's statements that she never provided classified information to the news media.
However, intelligence officials would not say whether they believed that Ms. McCarthy had been a source for Dana Priest in the Washington Post about secret CIA detention centers.
Media accounts have linked Ms. McCarthy's firing to the articles, but the CIA has never explicitly drawn such a connection.
A CIA spokeswoman, Jennifer Millerwise Dyke, said the officer was terminated for precisely the reasons we have given.
Unauthorized contacts with reporters and sharing classified information with reporters.
There's no question whatsoever that the officer did both.
The officer personally admitted doing both.
Again, her lawyer, Ty Cobb said on Tuesday, she never admitted to divulging sensitive material.
She didn't confess orally or in writing to leaking classified information.
Well thickens on all this, does it not?
Um folks, this is uh this is uh a distinction without a difference here, if you uh if you ask me.
And I don't whatever the specifics of this are, there is no question there is a shadow government that has been dogging this administration and undermining it at every level ever since 9-11 took place.
And I can't prove it, but I I I would I would not be surprised if one day we learn that it's all been done to shore up the Clinton administration legacy to cover their incompetence of the 90s uh by focusing such claims of incompetence and so forth on the Bush administration.
Plus uh these these people are they're they're they're Stalinists.
I mean, these are just these are just far left wing ideologues.
They will just that they will they will stop at nothing to get their own power back, and in the same time, the same process, uh, do what they can to protect uh the quote unquote legacy uh and and uh reputation, if you will, of the uh of the Clinton administration.
There have been too many of these leaks for too long.
Uh and there are too many stories about the CIA, for example, at war with the Bush administration.
We've been through all of this.
The CIA allowing certain books to be written by retired agents when they never used to do that before.
Said books end up being critical of the Bush administration and its conduct of the war on terror and uh and the war in Iraq.
Uh why did Mary McCarthy quit?
She didn't quit, she was fired.
Why was she fired?
She admitted leaking.
And whether she leaks sensitive material, whether she leaked the stuff on the prisons, she's not allowed to do that.
Period.
Not permissible.
She's saying, I I didn't even know anything about the black ops uh uh spy stuff and the prisons.
Well, that's that's very strange.
She's in the inspector general's office, which is overseeing all of this.
I this is uh this is uh and the and exactly as I said that libs in the media circling the wagons to let you hear from sound bites, uh Andrea Mitchell and others on this when we come back.
Stay with us.
All right, let's uh start with audio soundbite number seven here, Mike.
This is Andrea Mitchell last night.
Uh I guess it's on hardball, and I'm not sure what the show is.
And she's asked uh uh is any interaction with reporters unauthorized unless you have something in writing from your boss.
There is no dispute over whether or not it is improper, perhaps not illegal, but in improper against the rules at the CIA to have contacts with reporters that you don't then tell your bosses about.
You can have contacts if it's approved by the higher-ups.
So it's a firing offense.
But no one can ever recall anyone being fired for this.
And there's this other personal detail that she was due to retire.
She announced her retirement as of February 7th was basically her last day, but she told them she was retiring because she had gone to law school, passed the bar in November, and wanted to pursue an entirely different career in family law, specializing in adoptions.
At the CIA, you can't just say, I'm quitting.
There is an exit period where you are sort of uh debriefed.
You go through all sorts of legal procedures.
Her last day was due to be April 30th, which of course is Sunday.
They fired her a week in advance.
Oh, go, no, my heart be still.
Oh, my near tears.
Why it is evil porter goss.
What a mean guy.
She was she's gonna become a uh an adoption lawyer.
She's such a good person, and and And it's just it's she was quitting anyway to help the children.
And uh mean old Porter Goss fired her to make her an example.
It's just and then there's this.
Uh next question.
Uh, didn't it just become a CIA mixed message that having having lunch with the reporters, the same as giving secrets to her.
You know what's amazing about this?
It is you cannot, you cannot leak the name of a person that works at the CIA who is not even covert.
You can't do that.
We will nail you to the wall.
We'll do our best to put you and your bosses in jail.
But if you go out there and you leak secrets that expose clandestine CIA activity, why?
Good for you.
Like it's it's wonderful for Mary McCarthy to meet and have lunch with the media.
But scooter Libby needs to hang for it.
The purpose is don't have dinner with reporters.
Don't pick up the phone if a reporter is calling.
It doesn't matter what you say.
You're not supposed to have a contact with reporters without telling the higher-ups.
There you go.
So they are.
They're circling the wagons here exactly as predicted by me, old El Rushboat.
George in uh in Worcester, Massachusetts.
Hello and welcome.
Hey, Rush.
Well, you know what, if you remember the Rockefeller mallows from a couple of years ago.
Oh, that this is the playbook of the Democrats.
And you know what?
If that gets out, something like that gets out, and a staff gets fired.
Oh, it's a smear campaign.
If it's bad for the if it's good for the uh Democrats, um then it you know it ends up being um a smear campaign.
But when it's bad for them, it's a big leak.
Oh my gosh.
You know what?
You found us and it and it hurts us all, so it must be a leak.
Right.
It's the difference between a whistleblower and a leaker.
And a whistleblower is somebody who leaks stuff that damages the Bush administration.
A leaker is somebody who tells the truth about about Bill Clinton.
Jim in uh in St. Louis, welcome to the program.
Nice to have you with us, sir.
Good afternoon, Megadiddos.
Thank you.
Um it seems to me that I hear a news update about every 15 to 30 minutes about the price of gas and what it was two hours ago.
Uh if the Bush administration hired a good PR person, maybe they could turn that into the hardship that the Democrats and Libs were complaining about two or three years ago that we're not having during this war.
As long as they did it better than Jerry Ford did with his win buttons, I think that would be, you know, possibly very successful.
I like it.
I like it.
Hey, there's so much of this we could turn around on them.
You've been you've been acting advocating for higher prices.
You've been advocating for people driving less.
You've been advocating for reasons to get into these serious explanos exploration of uh alternative fuels.
And uh and here you go.
You can turn that around on them.
You see, you've been demanding sacrifice.
You've been saying that we've been fighting a war with no tax increases and no sacrifices, and it just isn't right, you can't do that.
Well that would be funny.
Bush makes a speech.
I am responding to the calls from Democrats of the past three years who've complained there has not been enough national sacrifice.
Well, next time you go to the gas pump, just tell yourself you're sacrificing for the war effort.
May God bless America.
The father of the accuser in the Duke Rape case says that she may not want to go through with this and uh testify on the stand.
The DA said, I don't care.
I'm proceeding with this anyway.
What does that tell you?
Richard, Kansas City, Missouri.
Welcome to the EIB network.
Hi.
Great talking to you, Rush.
Thank you.
Got something you need to help me understand.
If we are having a gas shortage, and this whole thing is just a matter of supply and demand, how come everybody can buy all the gas they want?
There aren't any lines at the pump.
Anyone who wants any gas can buy as much as they want at any time they want.
Because it's not a shortage.
Because there's not a shortage.
What you were talking about supply and demand does not automatically imply that there's a shortage.
It just means that there is more demand for the supply that we have worldwide.
China and India are using as much gasoline and oil energy products as we did ten years ago.
Those two countries combined.
That's a hell of a hell of a new source of demand uh in the market.
Uh there is some shortage with these with a new ethanol mixture that that is happening, and there's been some gas stations on the eastern seaboard without uh gasoline for a while, but there's there's not a shortage, there's just increased demand.
And when there's increased demand, the the price goes up.
It's it's it's it's it's one plus one equals two.
But as far as a shortage is concerned, there isn't.
We we've got more oil on the planet than we can shake a stick at and know what to do with just a matter of being allowed to go get it.
Uh and that day will come, by the way, as will tomorrow, and I'll see you then, folks.
We'll look forward to it.
Cheerio.
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