Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
You mean the McCain thing?
Yeah, I'm going to get to the McCain thing in due course, but no, I know exactly where I'm going to start today.
I'm going to start at the beginning.
Usually the best place.
Greetings to you thrill seekers, music lovers, conversationalists.
Welcome to the award-winning Rush Limbaugh program, a program exclusively tailored to rich Republicans and right-minded Republicans and those who aspired to be both.
Liberals and moderates, listen at your own risk.
Telephone number, if you want to be on the program today, is 800-282-2882.
And the email address, rush at EIBNet.com.
Before we get to the news of the day, folks, I got to tell you, I went to a, I had a charity event on Monday night and Tuesday.
It was for the Boys and Girls Clubs of America.
And every other year, a bunch of friends of mine have arranged with the United States Golf Association to be able to play the U.S. Open course for that year a couple, three weeks prior to the actual open, with the course set up as it will be for the Open.
And it is a fundraiser.
We played Wingedfoot in Marinek yesterday up in Westchester County.
I birdied two of the PAR fives on the front nine.
And of course, it's impossible.
The fairways are, what do they say, 20 yards wide and the rough assistant.
You lose balls in the rough.
It's going to be fascinating to watch the professionals play the course.
But Monday night, there's always a dinner to treat the participants and to get into the convivial spirit of things.
And every year there is a, I don't know, winner of sorts, an example chosen of one of the most successful kids that's gone through the Boys and Girls Clubs program in the past year or two.
And that child, that youngster, is a guest of the people putting on the event.
And Monday night, the winner, I'm not sure that's the right word to use, but the young man that sailed through the program and just accomplished great things was a man by the name of Jarvis McInnis, and he was from Biloxi, Mississippi.
And he's just a teenager, and he's serious.
He has his aspiration to be president of the United States.
It's what he's focusing on and aiming at.
And he got up and made a speech.
And he has a speech impediment.
He stutters.
But it didn't stop.
It was one of the best speeches I have ever heard.
And it had everybody in the room spellbound and leaning forward on their chairs like I am doing now so as not to miss a word that he was saying.
He was quoting poets all over the place.
He was talking about the experience that the Boys and Girls Clubs of America have meant to him.
His club was wiped out in Hurricane Katrina, and they've been rebuilding it and trying to get it back in order.
But I just, I thought it was one of the most courageous speeches I've ever heard.
He was one of the most well-spoken individuals.
His articulation was flawless.
His energy level was perfect.
His command and presence of the room as a teenager blew me away.
And he addressed his speech impediment, his stuttering.
It did not stop him.
It did not make him self-conscious.
It didn't make him nervous in any way.
It was stunning.
It was exciting to watch this.
To me, it was like watching the future of the country, the youth of America.
And here's somebody taking life seriously and accomplishing great things and overcoming tremendous obstacles.
Boys and Girls Clubs of America help out disadvantaged youth and set them on the right path and then try to show them the right directions to go.
And when his speech was over, he got a standing ovation, went back and sat down at his table.
And when the evening ended, a bunch of people approached him to compliment him in his speech and tell him how well he'd done.
Well, I don't know if he's presidential timber, Mr. Snergley.
It's tough to measure this when one's in their teenage years.
But you remember Bill Clinton when he was at Yale, all the hindsight crowd was all talking about, we knew he was going to be president.
We just knew he was going to present.
Well, you don't know whether that's, especially when it comes from the orbit of Clintonoids.
You don't know if that's just a bunch of hindsight.
I can't tell, but I can tell you the kid's very serious about life and improving himself.
And he's got the biggest goal you could have.
So I walked up to him.
He was seated, and I walked up to him, sat down, and said, Jarvis, my name is Rush Limbaugh.
And if you ever do run for president, I'm telling you right here tonight, you've got my vote.
He shook my hand and smiled.
And it was a really uplifting occasion.
And it was really cool to be part of it.
So I wanted to mention this to you and also congratulate Jarvis McInnes for the award that he won, the attention that he has garnered, and for his sterling speech.
I'm wont to call it a performance because I think he was being entirely genuine.
But it was a great night.
And we're back now, though, in the EIB Southern Command at home in our heavily bunkered and heavily secured fortress here, our broadcast complex.
People know the address.
Some people do, but it's impossible to get in.
If you want to be on the program today, the telephone number is 800-282-2882, the email address rush at EIBnet.com.
Hillary Clinton, her virtual campaign for Iowa, has started.
She's announced an energy plan, and it comes very close to the release date of Al Gore's idiotic movie, An Inconvenient Lie.
Oh, no.
What is it?
Inconvenient truth.
We've got immigration news.
Vicente Fox, the president of Mexico, is in a three-day four-state tour of the United States.
And Vicente Fox out there saying, I don't think this idea of offense is going to work, tells me that it would.
I wouldn't necessarily call Vicente Fox an enemy, but when somebody is on the opposite side of an issue that you are says that what you want to do isn't going to work, it probably will work.
It's like when members of either party say, oh, I'm so sorry for the problems those guys are having.
What they really need to do to fix this is X.
They have no desire for the enemy destroying him or herself to fix themselves.
And the outrage of the day and the literally unbelievable event of the day is the reaction to the FBI going into the offices of Congressman William Jefferson, Democrat Louisiana, taking documents relevant to their investigation.
You would think that there would at least be somebody on Capitol Hill that would be angry at Congressman William Jefferson, Democrat Louisiana.
Instead, we have what goes for Republican leadership now getting on the executive branch, getting on the president, getting on Alberto Gonzalez, the Attorney General, for violating separation of powers.
In essence, asking for themselves to be treated as an imperial body, uninvestigable.
You can't, you can't, the executive branch can't look into what we're doing, but these guys in Congress can issue subpoenas all day long to the executive branch and demand they come up and explain what they're doing.
Bush can't bring any congressman up there and put him on some kind of a hearing and explain to us here in the White House what you're doing over there.
Here is a, and talk about being politically tone deaf.
Here you have the Democrats attempting, still attempting, even though it's going to go nowhere, they are still attempting to craft as a campaign theme the Republican culture of corruption.
And lo and behold, delivered to the Republicans on a silver platter is Congressman William Jefferson, Democrat, Louisiana, who is in the midst of a huge bribery investigation.
And he had $100,000 in cold, hard cash.
They got 90 of it in his office, or they found it in his home somewhere, and they got paper.
It was in the freezer.
I mean, it's hard cold cash.
And it's suspected that that's what he commandeered a rescue vehicle for down in the Hurricane Katrina aftermath to go get some of that hard cold cash from his fashionable New Orleans home.
So you would think the Republican leadership would understand there's an opportunity here, but no, everybody from Denny Hastert to Bill Frist and Newt Gingrich is up in arms over the violation of the separation of powers here.
Investigations by the executive branch cannot be done this way.
A judge issued a warrant on this, and Congress is going nuts these days about warrants.
This was a warranted search.
You know what it could be?
And I wouldn't be surprised.
I know that these guys are serious about this separation of powers business, but come on.
None of the rest of us can say anything like this.
If a member of our family is investigated for something and there's a search warrant and their home is searched or their office is searched, look at Dusty Fogo.
FBI went in and searched his offices and his home, this disgraced CIA exec, and there wasn't anybody concerned about that.
Well, Russia, that was the executive branch investigating itself.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But why does Congress get immunity from virtually everything?
If Congress gets immunity from virtually anything, then we can go back to the House Bank before it's all said and done.
We go back to the House Post Office.
And basically, whatever anybody wants to do in Congress, they'll be allowed to do unless they do it with Jack Abramoff.
And then we'll get busy and fry you.
I think one of the possibilities here, ladies and gentlemen, could be that the Republicans, because Congressman William Jefferson, Democrat, Louisiana, is black.
Could it be that the Republican leadership wants to show the Democrats and the world and the country that they are not racist and that they would feel, you think this is, I don't know this, this is.
This is just speculation.
But it wouldn't surprise me if, in addition to the seriousness, I believe they're very serious about this separation of powers business.
But it wouldn't surprise me if there was a tinge of, oh my gosh, if we support this, they're going to call us racists.
We can't have that.
The same guilt here that Shelby Steele has so brilliantly written about in recent columns of the Wall Street Journal and his book.
Well, I think, look, I don't doubt that the imperial nature of their self-perception.
We are members of Congress.
We are above the law.
We are elites.
We are immune from the normal hubbub of everyday life that you plebes and serfs are subjected to.
I know there's a lot in the mix here, but I wouldn't throw out the last item I mentioned either as a possibility.
All right.
And Senator McCain, ladies and gentlemen, has now blamed me and Lou Dobbs and some guy named Savage for poisoning your minds on the immigration debate.
He had a little private meeting with country club blue blood Republicans.
It's reported by the New York Observer.
And in the process of blaming me and Lou Dobbs, what Senator McCain has made clear here is that you people, he has a view of talk radio that is shared by the left and other ignoramuses who don't bother to listen to it and who are threatened by it.
He's got the view that you're a bunch of idiots, you're a bunch of mind-numbed robots, and without me as your Sven Gali telling you what to do and what to think every day, why the immigration bill would sail through.
But there are troublemakers out there like me and Dobbs who are getting in the way by poisoning your mind.
We will, of course, address these comments by Senator McCain during the course of today's excursion into broadcast excellence.
Sit tight, all the rest of the program, right around the corner.
With all due respect to Charlie Gibson, I am America's real anchor man, Rush Limbaugh, the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies, a program that meets and surpasses all audience expectations on a daily basis.
And welcome to those of you watching on the DittoCam today.
We're up and running at rushlimbaugh.com.
Email time, dear Rush.
This goes back to my comments, by the way, on the Da Vinci Code.
May 22nd when the guy sent the email, it was two days ago.
I guess it was Monday.
Yes, it was on Monday.
And I pointed out this movie had to be good.
It would set all kinds of box office records internationally.
Because every critic, except two of them that I found, hated it.
And I know why they hated it.
You know why they hated it?
Because they had such high hopes that the movie would finally put the nail in the coffin of Christianity once and for all.
And it doesn't do that because, as the critics said, it's just a movie.
They were hoping for something more and they didn't get it.
It's just a movie.
50 million people in this country have bought and read the book.
Dear Rush, I am appalled at your endorsement of the book and the movie, The Da Vinci Code.
This book and film is nothing more than anti-Christian propaganda.
This is not an opinion, it's a statement of fact.
Because the Bible tells us a different story.
The Bible is all true, and I do not have any tolerance of any film or book or anyone else who holds anti-Christian views.
Now, I'm going to take a very hard-line stance here, Rush.
You have a choice.
You either detract your comments, that means take them back you made in the first hour of Monday or face losing customers to your Rush 24-7 website.
I will tell everyone I know.
I will email people.
I will tell them that you are condoning anti-Christian propaganda.
Let me give you some advice.
Don't think that I am not serious because I am.
I can guarantee that you will lose so many customers to your site that you will have to close it down or offer it for free.
I also want you to explain to me why you're endorsing this film and the book.
You have 24 hours to answer this email or I say goodbye to you forever.
Is that clear?
Are you going to follow my demands or do I just say bye-bye to you forever?
The choice is yours.
The emailer is a subscriber to my website.
His name is Melvin Babb.
I don't know where Melvin is from.
He didn't say doesn't really matter.
But Melvin, I did not endorse it.
I simply said that, and I haven't seen the movie.
I simply was responding to critics who had universally panned it.
And I said, because of that, this movie is going to do huge box office.
The critics are just like anybody else in the media.
The public goes the other way, particularly when there's so much conventional wisdom.
I did say I think all of the hubbub about this is a little bit overdone.
Christianity is strong enough to withstand this.
Understand the sensitivity people have to this, and I understand the concern, but it's just a movie, and it was just a book, and 50 million Americans bought and read the book.
Many of them, I'm sure, Catholic, many of them, I'm sure, devout Christians.
And not until the movie comes out does all this hubbub start.
I mean, there was a little of it during the book, but I think people need to back off and understand entertainment medium and not get so uptight and concerned about all this.
I guarantee you, this is not going to shake one person's faith.
It's not going to take one Christian and say, well, I have been lied to by the Pope, Catholic Church.
I've been lied to by my preacher.
I'm abandoning Catholicism.
It's not going to happen.
And it serves a purpose, in fact, in calling more attention to Christianity.
And what does it really say?
Because people will know that this is a movie.
So, Mel, well, Mr. Snirdley says he can't believe I'm being so nice to this.
He's a subscriber to the website.
He's a devout follower.
He has his fervent beliefs.
His faith is undoubtedly running deep here.
I'm not going to, actually, there's no necessity here.
There's no requirement to embarrass him.
I think his email does that by itself.
But, Melvin, if you want to go ahead and start emailing people to cancel their subscriptions and calling them up and asking them to do that, place an ad in USA Today while you're at it.
Maybe they might give you one if you tell them that's what you want to do.
Okay, as you know, we've been chronicling, folks.
It's amazing what's happening down here in South Florida with runaway gators.
Runaway gator.
We've had a drought down here.
There's not enough rain, and these poor reptiles don't know what to do.
In fact, I was out at one of the golf courses I played down here on Saturday, and I asked some of the guys, okay, where are the gators?
So we know we'd be on the lookout.
They've left.
What, the gators have decamped?
Yeah, there's not enough water here, and of course, they've found a lake further away, and so there aren't any gators out there.
And sure as anything, I didn't see any gators.
Sun Sentinel, South Florida Sun Sentinel, the headline, Gator looks both ways, then crosses turnpike ramp.
For crying out, somebody spotted a gator at the turnpike exit ramp off PGA Boulevard, which is just north of here.
And so it was slowing down traffic because people spotted a gator.
So they sent a gator guy up there, a highway patrolman, and to scout the area.
And all of a sudden, after a guy watches for a couple hours, the gator surfaces, approaches the actual turnpike, looks both ways, the guy says, and when there was no traffic, crossed the turnpike.
And they lost it.
They don't know where the gator went.
But I mean, just the headline: Gator looks both ways, then crosses turnpike.
Can you imagine this is a story?
An alligator crossing a turnpike lane or ramp is a big story in a newspaper.
Quick timeout, folks.
We'll come back and get started with all the rest of the big time news right after this.
You know what fascinates me about this Gator looking both ways before crossing the highway?
How many of you parents out there can't get your kids to do that?
And yet here's a Gator that seems to do it instinctively.
All right, we're back.
800-282-2882 is the number if you want to be on the program.
By the way, Democrats have just asked Congressman William Jefferson Democrat Louisiana to resign from the Ways and Means Committee.
He's a ranking member.
He's a pretty high-ranking member on the Democrat side of the Ways and Means Committee.
And I know they're McKinneying him.
They're assuming he's guilty before the evidence is in or before the verdict is in, but they got to get him out of there because they still want to use this culture of corruption business against the Republicans.
Now, several black Maryland Democratic leaders agree with Kwaezi Imfume that a lack of support for his U.S. Senate run by top Democrats will alienate black voters.
Delegate Obie Patterson lamented that the Democrats' most prominent white leaders, State Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. and U.S. Representative Stenny Hoyer, the House Minority Whip, are backing the Senate bid of Representative Benjamin Cardin, who is white.
It has caused some people in my community, particularly the African Americans, to wonder how they're going to vote, especially if Kwaezi Mfume does not win the primary.
Mfume, if he loses the primary in September, would burn state Democrats again, according to former Prince George's County executive Wayne K. Curry.
Wayne K. Curry was referring to 2002 Democratic gubernatorial nominee Kathleen Kennedy Townsend's choice of a white former Republican as her running mate.
Now, folks, there is a pattern here of white Democrats abandoning black Democrats.
Remember that the Democrats in the House backed Nancy Pelosi for minority leader over Harold Ford Jr., who is black from Tennessee.
The Democrats have stood behind Terry McAuliffe over the former mayor of Atlanta for chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
Remember that?
Maynard, what was Maynard's last name?
Maynard Jackson.
That's right.
Maynard Jackson wanted a DNC gig.
The white Democrats said, nope, it's going to be Clinton's boy, Terry McAuliffe.
Democrats also recruited Fritz Mondahl over a black Minnesota Supreme Court judge to run against Norm Coleman after the untimely death of Paul Wellstone.
The Democrats diverted money from New York Democrat gubernatorial candidate Carl McCall, who was black, in order to attempt to beat Jeb Bush.
The money that was going to go to Carl McCall came down to Democratic candidate against Bush for governor in Florida, and McCall ended up getting money we raised for him on this program.
And then there was the story earlier in the week, now since denied, that the Democratic National Committee had operatives in New Orleans trying to sabotage the mayoral bid of school bus Ray Nagan.
And now we've got Mfume sounding the warning bells, hey, hey, hey, if they don't support me, why, there's going to be trouble in the Democratic Party.
Add to that, the Democrats don't appear to be supporting Congressman William Jefferson, Democrat Louisiana, asking him to leave the Ways and Means Committee.
Did you guys happen to see on, I guess it was Tuesday, this story about the Clintons' marriage in the New York Times?
Oh, I mean, I have the story here.
I've read it backwards, forwards.
I've read it sideways.
It's over 2,000 words.
It doesn't make any sense.
I mean, on the one hand, we get titillated with the possibility Clinton's still out there dating and having affairs, and the writer pulls back.
It makes me wonder what this piece was before all the editors of the New York Times got hold of it.
He counts the number of days per month they spend together, how many nights, how many weekends, where their various travels take them.
And the whole, the slug line, the headline is, State of Clinton marriage, a question for Democrats.
Of course, this is obviously part of the setup for Hillary Clinton's presidential run.
But when you read this, it comes to no conclusions.
In fact, after I read this, this sounds like the perfect marriage.
They never see each other.
Not never, but it's so infrequent.
And when they do, they're relaxing at home and Chappaqua jointly doing the gardening.
In fact, in February, they saw each other in one day, Valentine's Day.
And then other examples have given where they spend all kinds of time together.
So this story meanders all over.
I'm not even going to bother reading it.
It doesn't make any sense.
Not even any excerpts that make any sense.
It's just, it's one of these, as a blogger was saying, it's one of these coded pieces.
This is a piece that you have to be a regular Times reader, a regular Democratic Clintonoid, to understand what this piece says.
It is a, it's a new, you talk about the DaVinci Code, a Clinton code, as far as this story in the New York Times is concerned.
Now, Mrs. Clinton is back, ladies and gentlemen.
She's pulled a stunt here with an energy proposal that she has.
And I was wondering today how to set this up.
And I think the best way to say it is that Hillary is launching her virtual Iowa primary campaign.
Because if you go back in the past, Hillary Clinton has opposed ethanol.
She thought it was bad, bad, bad.
But now all of a sudden, ethanol is good, good, good.
And we've got to connect the dots here.
I mean, I'll connect them for you.
Corn grows in Iowa.
Corn is used to make ethanol, and Iowa has the earliest primary vote.
The New York Daily News has a story about this today with a response from a spokesman for the RNC, Aaron McClear, who accuses Hillary of blocking efforts to boost U.S. oil and ethanol production in the past.
We have audio soundbites from a speech, National Press Club, where she announced her big energy plans.
After giving the speech, the president of the club, Jonathan Solant, says, we have a few energy questions for you, beginning, what are five specific actions that every American and every business should take now?
What are five specific actions that Americans should take now or in the next few years to return to reduce energy use?
What do you personally plan to do?
Well, there are a lot of actions we can take.
I mean, one is switch to fluorescent lighting.
It saves an enormous amount of electricity.
Stop tape.
This is the smartest woman in the world.
By reputation, this we have been told.
We have been assured that this woman's brain would blind us, fluorescent lighting insider skull or not.
And she sounds like Lori David.
It's about light bulbs.
Buy appliances that come with the sort of energy star or other designation that they are low energy users.
Stop the tape.
Write again out of the Lori David HBO documentary.
Your cell phone charger, unplug your cell phone charger or anything that has this star on it.
Resume tape.
Look for ways to weatherize your own home, to look at windows and leaks.
Stop the tape.
I feel like I've been transported back to the Jimmy Carter presidency.
Next, she's going to tell us to wear sweaters?
Sounds so simplistic, but the net aggregate effect can be extraordinarily high in terms of saving money for the individual and also for the entire system.
That, folks, is a vacant answer.
That is an irrelevant, vacant answer.
Americans don't want to be told to turn down a thermostat.
They don't want to be told to go out and start getting duct tape for the windows.
Next thing you know, she's going to be saying, cut up some trash cans, some crystal clear trash cans, and tape them around your windows to control the wind leaks in the wintertime so you can keep your thermostat low and still stay warm.
We've been there and we've done that.
And if those ideas had any validity and any value, they would still be in use today because people would have found them truly beneficial.
Next question.
During the Carter administration, there was a 55-mile an hour speed limit, which even the oil company executives, they driving slower would save gas.
Would you favor a return to a national speed limit?
The 55-mile speed limit really does lower gas usage.
And wherever it can be required and the people will accept it, we ought to do it.
But there are other things that we ought to do.
At every gas station, there ought to be a little sign which says, have you checked to see if your tires are inflated to the right pressure?
If you do that, you also save gas mileage.
I mean, there are things that can be done.
You know, I'm telling you, folks, this is the 1970s.
It's the Jimmy.
In fact, this goes back to Nixon in part.
But I'll never forget back in the 70s when we had the contrived shortage of oil combined with the rising price of gasoline.
These were the kinds of suggestions we got.
We got, well, make sure your tires are inflated to the right pressure.
Avoid jackrabbit starts.
Apply your brakes evenly and firmly.
Coast as often as you can.
I followed all these things.
For a while, I followed everything that they said to do.
And every 10 miles, I had to stop and drain the excess gasoline that I was saving from my tank because it was overflowing.
This is asinine.
This is a woman who claims to be the smartest woman, or supporters do, and who has big visionary ideas for the future.
And she comes up with this energy plan, and I will guarantee you this major energy plan that you're hearing her announce is time to release a day or two before Al Gore's movie.
Convenient truth?
Inconvenient truth.
Yeah.
She also talks about cutting foreign use, use of foreign oil by 50% in 2025.
That's 20 years.
I mean, folks, even the communists, they only went out five.
I mean, the communists weren't stupid enough to make 20-year plans.
They at least kept it reasonable.
The Soviets had their five-year plans.
They didn't work either.
But at least there was some reality check on the part of the communists when they were trying to plan their future.
But if anyone out there doubts how much disdain that Hillary has for you and your thought process, if anybody out there doubts how much Barbara and how much Streisand the left will buy for Mrs. Clinton, check into this energy plan, major, major energy plan, which is really nothing more than a political stunt right now to blunt Al Gore, because I think a lot of people are getting the opinion he's serious.
A couple more sound bites here.
This is a portion of her, a portion of her remarks on ethanol.
We should put a billion dollars from the Strategic Energy Fund into research aimed at unlocking the full potential of cellulosic ethanol.
We can expand loan guarantees to help the first 1 billion gallons of cellulosic ethanol capacity come online.
We've got to take action on this pump issue or we're just spinning our wheels, so to speak.
I propose that we have ethanol pumps at 50% of gas stations nationwide by 2015 and 100% by 2025.
Ethanol pumps, she hated ethanol.
She was opposed to ethanol for the longest time.
But now the virtual Iowa primary has begun because corn's in Iowa and corn is used to make ethanol.
And the first primary is in Iowa, the Hawkeye Caucy, as they are affectionately known here.
I know the next thing you know, Mrs. Clinton is going to be accusing me of poisoning the atmosphere of energy conservation by telling you people to keep wasting.
This is how they deal with me in Washington.
Limbo's poisoning the atmosphere.
All right.
Now, this next bite, Hillary gets heckled and protested, but the press club president Jonathan Salant comes to her defense.
I'm told that you're going to be hard to hear the protest, but trust me, she did get heckled as she is talking with Salante, making a statement from her speech.
We can do it.
We just need a commitment to do it.
And we need the leadership in both the public and the private sectors to get it done.
And I believe that we definitely can get it done.
So from my position today, I hope we make the right choice.
Thank you all very much.
Sorry for the interruption.
You know, even my eight-year-old knows that when you're an invited guest, you're supposed to be polite and listen to the speaker and give the courtesy that you would like.
Yeah, I doubt that kind of courtesy would be extended to a Republican.
It's not supposed to heckle Democrats out there.
You heckle Condoleezza Rice all day long, and anybody else can't heckle.
And McCames, you can't heckle her.
And she didn't handle a heckling well either.
It took her totally off her stride.
It started sounding shrill, you know, like your first wife.
Everybody all agog.
We got a new audio tape from Osama bin Laden.
It says that Masawe was not part of the 9-11 operation.
That's sort of like an ex-president saying he never had sex with that intern.
Not once, not a single time, not ever.
What does it matter anyway, what bin Laden is saying?
Why does anybody want to invest any trust in him whatsoever?
Gasoline prices.
This is fascinating.
General Motors has come up with a plan to sell cars, and they're going to guarantee cheap prices for gasoline in California and Florida.
Aiming to capitalize on consumer angst about the high cost of gasoline, GM on Tuesday said that it would cap pump prices at $1.99 for customers in California who buy certain vehicles by July 5th.
One hitch to the promotion is that customers must also agree to enroll in the OnStar Vehicle Diagnostic Service, free for the first year, but after that, $16.95 a month.
The other is that many of the eligible vehicles are serious gas guzzlers, offer good for 2006 and 2007 model years.
In California, the eligible vehicles are the Chevrolet Tahoe and the Suburban SUV, the Impala and Monte Carlo sedans, the GMC Yukon and Yukon XL SUVs, the Hummer H2 H3 SUVs, the Cadillac SRX SUV, and the Pontiac Grand Prix and Buick La Crosse sedans.
In Florida, the eligible vehicles are the Impala, the Monte Carlo, the Grand Prix, and lacrosse, not SUVs.
Now, what happens here is that every month for one year, General Motors will give drivers who buy these cars in Florida and California a credit on a prepaid card based on their estimated fuel usage.
Fuel usage will be calculated by the miles they drive as recorded by OnStar and the vehicle's fuel economy rating.
An example: a Florida resident who drives a 2006 Buick La Crosse about 1,000 miles a month would get an estimated monthly credit of $60 based on the current premium fuel price of $3.19.
California, Person there who buys a Chevy Tahoe, drives 1,000 miles a month, would get an estimated $103.75 monthly credit based on the current average premium fuel price of $365 per gallon.
Mr. Snerdley, does this make you want to go trade in your beamer and get an Impala?
What about you, Dawn?
What about you, Brian?
Well, we'll find out.
I mean, some people are going to do this in order to get a cheaper gas price.
But it is an interesting idea.
The market responding here from the units that sell cars, and they have the most concern about this.
Back in just a second, folks.
Stay with us.
First hour of today's excursion into Broadcast Excellent in the can on the way over by Armored Courier to the secret warehouse housing artifacts for the future Limbaugh Broadcast Museum.