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Jan. 16, 2007 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:34
January 16, 2007, Tuesday, Hour #3
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And greetings once again, ladies and gentlemen.
You're tuned to the Rush Limbaugh program, a program with fun, frolic, and frivolity for all, as well as the serious discussion of issues, all presented in one highly compelling broadcast package, found virtually nowhere else in major media.
Our phone number, if you want to be on the program, is 800-282-2882.
And the email address is rush at EIBNet.com.
All right.
From Landstool Germany, U.S. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, who, by the way, canceled the two o'clock press event today, two o'clock Eastern Time because of the announcement by Barack Obama that he's going to form his presidential exploratory committee for the purposes of deciding by February 10th whether he's going to seek the office of dictat president of the uh United States of America to cancel a press conference.
But she said yesterday, get this.
Afghanistan has made some progress, but the country is tottering and needs more troops to finish off the Taliban and Al-Qaeda forces.
I'm encouraged by the progress in Afghanistan, but Afghanistan is tottering.
We got to get more support there to make sure that we try to finish off the Taliban and Al Qaeda that are regrouping coming across the border.
We expect a big spring offensive.
Now, doesn't this just frost you?
These senators and these congressmen prancing all over the globe, trying to appear to be presidential just to enhance their pathetic profiles and their stagnating political careers.
let's face it, the presence on the scene with such verve and excitement and a drive-by media And apparently by a lot of just plain old everyday Democrats out there across the country for Barack Obama, doesn't that sort of say that Mrs. Clinton is stagnating?
Barack something new, supposedly.
There's nothing new in politics, but he's got the label, he's got the moniker.
He's new, he's refreshing, he has new ideas, he's uh new generation of Mrs. Clinton, uh old guard.
Stagnating.
So they run around and while while they're trying to do their best to secure defeat in Iraq, they run around and tell us how we need more troops and we need more force to wipe out Al Qaeda and the Taliban in uh in Afghanistan.
Of course, we don't have any interest for Mrs. Clinton on wiping out Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations in Iraq.
You know, it's a long shot, pipe dream actually.
I wish the Bush administration would call them on it.
Uh these are just nothing more than high-powered photo ops at the uh at the expense of our troops.
Audio soundbite time.
You know, this program is so on the cutting edge.
It's just it's just frightening.
I can remember my first commentary in broadcast media on the plight of ugly Americans, the and I named the uglo American, was way back in 19, what was it?
70.
No, would have been 1983 when in Kansas City.
When I went to Sacramento, I continued my crusade on behalf of the ugly American, talked about how they were demonstrating uh discriminated against, how life was tougher for them.
It is where I evolved.
Undeniable truth of life number 24, feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women easy access to the mainstream of society.
I don't care what you think of how that sounds, there can be no doubt about it.
It's up to you to face the truth.
That's why I say you've got to have courage to face the truth in this program, or you go bazunkers and nuts.
But last night at the Golden Globes, uh, one of the winners, actress, uh television actress, was uh America Ferrera, who plays the lead character in Ugly Betty, the TV show Ugly Betty.
Now I profess I've I've never seen Ugly Betty.
I I don't really don't want to look at ugly people when I don't have to.
But they made a TV show about this.
She won it for best actress in a TV comedy, and here's a portion of her acceptance speech.
Thank you for recognizing the show and this character who is truly bringing a new face to television, and such a beautiful message about beauty that lies deeper than what we see.
And it's such an honor to play a role that I hear from young girls on a daily basis how it makes them feel worthy and lovable and that they have more to offer the world than they thought.
And it's such an honor to play this role.
And there was, oh, don't tears, there was applause.
Yeah, I find it interesting how a program with a character who's on purpose ugly is now said to be a positive influence and a great role model for young girls because they're getting a steady diet of the way to be successful is to be as brainless as Paris Hilton to be as thin as Nicole Ritchie and have literally nothing to offer other than those two things.
And, of course, there's this crusade to try to get women to eat and grow, because the role models for young women are all these gorgeous babes that, you know, manufactured with silicon.
So here comes Ugly Betty.
Oh, oh, and everybody because this is a real woman.
This real girl gets and this does so much to help girls who watch the program.
So this television show, yes, it is a positive influence on the people that watch it.
Great influence for America.
24 dangerous.
This show, fabulous.
But I just want to take you back.
I mean, 1993, just to prove this.
On my television show, this is what I had to say about the ugly back then.
Let's face it, you ugly people know who you are.
And you average people, I think you know who you are as well.
It says here, ugly people tend to earn about 5% less than average looking people.
However, differences emerge between men and women.
Men who are uglier than average tend to make 9% less, while below average women or ugly, uh make only five percent less.
We've come up with a name, by the way, for the ugly.
We call them uglo Americans.
Ugly.
So yeah, so uh it's amazing.
And I get grief.
I get grief for this, but I was sympathetic to them.
By the way, I was not making fun of the ugly Americans.
I was championing their cause, talking about how much tougher in life they have it.
And people would ask, well, well, how how do you know who's ugly?
Since then, by the way, there have been scientific, I wish I could blow one of them right at the tip of my tongue.
Some some researchers did some serious research on the societal effects of ugly people, and everybody said, Well, who are they who are they saying is ugly?
Who has the right to proclaim that person ugly and another person not ugly?
Who who and in the scientific group who did this?
You know, when I was asked this, my answer was, come on.
The ugly know who they are when they look in the mirror.
I mean, this is it's not a mystery here.
Check the two-tone green leisure suit purchased at Kmart.
Should be one of your first clues.
Dawn's rolling her eyes but trying not to laugh, but can't help herself.
Anyway, I get grief for it.
And now they've awarded a character playing an ugly woman and a golden globe for this is what I mean, folks, about the pioneers taking the uh arrows.
Speaking of Golden Globes, we've got you've got it, you've got to hear this.
I've debated the whole program whether to play these for you, but they did air last night.
Warren Beatty, uh, I guess he was he got the big award.
Uh I don't know what the award was.
The lifetime sex achievement award, whatever to get out there.
Uh, here's a portion of his acceptance speech.
I don't know why these guys can't take it a little easier.
I don't know why they can't just, you know, uh do what I ask them to do.
I I asked Arnold to become a Democrat.
did what I said.
LAUGHTER LAUGHTER Ha, ha, ha, ha.
Tom Hanks did a moving tribute to Warren Beatty's balls, and I I kid you not.
I think you will all agree with me when I say what balls this man has.
What balls this man has.
And by balls, of course, I mean artistic vision and fortitude.
What balls has Warren Beatty?
Again, what balls I ask you, what balls?
And by balls I mean charisma, class, confidence, and balls.
And eyeballs.
I guess the problem with this year's Golden Globes was there was no broke back mountain uh to give any awards to, and so they they had to talk about male genitalia.
And the final one here is Sacha Baron Cohen, who got the uh uh best actor for his uh character Barat, Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.
This movie was a life-changing experience.
I saw some amazing, beautiful, invigorating parts of America, but I saw some dark parts of America, an ugly side of America, a side of America that rarely sees the light of day.
I refer, of course, to the anus and testicles of my co-star Ken Davis.
When I was in that scene, and I stared down and saw your two wrinkled golden globes on my chin.
I thought to myself, I'd better win a bloody award for this.
So, you know, I I know folks uh this is uh shocking, but this that that's the show started at 8 o'clock last night.
I don't know what period these awards were given, uh, probably after 10, but that uh that that passed for mainstream conversation and acceptance speeches from Hollywood the Golden Globes last night.
Back.
That's why I maintain that I remain a role model for the youth of America, despite all this.
Back in just a second.
Snerdley just said after hearing the um audio sound bites and Tom Hanks and Satya Baron Cohen.
That nuke last night that went off in Valencia on 24.
Tell me what's the downside.
If a nuke could take out Hollywood, I'd support it.
That's snurdly speaking, and only after hearing these Rybald uh uh coarse uh comments and the acceptance speech broadcast last night, by the way, uh on NBC.
Couple of quick stories, and these if if if you're still not quite sure about the hypocrisy and phoniness when it comes to outcomes and results of liberals, I want you to listen to these two stories.
First one is from Tiburon, California, which is the Bay Area.
It's uh from Sausalito.
It's actually beautiful place.
Some residents of Tiburon, California, San Francisco suburb, plan to fight a proposed habitat for humanity housing development there over concerns the project would decrease property values and increase traffic.
The international nonprofit partnered with the owner of a sixteen and a half acre tract in a town's Eagle Rock neighborhood, and they want to build four single-family homes for low-income families, but neighbors fear negative impact on a community.
Habitat for humanity is to bring the neighborhood up, not to bring the neighborhood down, said Bill Roberts, a 40-year Eagle Rock resident.
Roberts at he and dozens of other neighbors are raising money to hire an attorney to fight the project.
We don't have anything against a habitat, but nobody wants the traffic here.
It's going to kill us.
All right.
Typical San Francisco liberals.
They're all for the poor, as long as somebody else foots the bill and the poor stay out of their sight.
Traffic?
Increased traffic from four houses.
You know, these people live by a liberal word for the week calendar.
They must get all they almost get one for Christmas, or I mean the holidays.
The word is all that needs to be uttered, and that's all the thought required to win the argument.
Everything shuts down after they have uttered the word.
Vietnam is a word.
Quagmire is a word, the children were global warming, Hitler traffic.
The word de jure, whatever it is that you want to oppose, just come up with one of these keywords.
And that's how you express your disgust.
They love the poor.
They love oh, they they chastise people like us, ladies and gentlemen, for not caring about the poor and for wanting to keep them for so forth.
The poor want to live where the affluent citizens of Tiburon.
Oh, no, no, no, no, do everything.
Keep keep.
We are going to keep the scum out.
We're not going to have our property values devalued, and we're not going to have a bunch of traffic here by having those people in our neighborhood.
Yet, of course, it's Bush that doesn't care about the people from Katrina and the aftermath of Katrina and all this.
Here's the next story.
And guess where this is from?
Chappaquittick, and it's the same thing.
The young couple were struggling to get by on Martha's Vineyard, living in a tent with their two-year-old daughter when they got the life-changing news through an affordable housing program.
Andrea De La Russo and Lucas Reardon had qualified to buy a small house on an acre of land at a price far below the island's soaring real estate values.
Reardon, who works as a carpenter and a fisherman, Says, hey, felt like winning the lottery.
A year and a half later, the couple's dream of ownership seems as far away as ever, blocked by ten chappaquittic property owners, most of them seasonal residents of a neighborhood where three affordable homes are planned.
Opponents of the new housing have gone to court and have also taken a more direct tack.
One couple, Cheryl and Robert Finkelstein paid 287,900 last fall for an acre of land where one of the homes would have stood seven times the forty thousand dollar price a moderate income family had agreed to pay for the lot.
Just to make sure that the Hoy Poloy was nowhere near them.
So Tiburon, California, Martha's Vineyard, Chapacoitic, a total of seven homes, so-called affordable housing.
Not here, pal.
We love you, but we don't want to look at you.
We love you, but we don't want to have to see you.
We love you, but we just don't want you where we live.
And this, folks, is typical.
This is common for liberals.
This is who they are.
While they claim to be at one with these people and have all the compassion and understanding, and the w they're the ones that are going to take care of them.
They're the ones that are going to make sure they survive evil Republicans and conservatism.
This is who they are.
Liberals don't they don't want windmills at the Cape.
They don't want commoners in affordable housing.
And they even went so far as to buy the m buy the property up so that the undesirables wouldn't even have a chance.
Chapquittick.
Here's uh Jonathan in Branson, Missouri.
Hi, Jonathan.
Welcome to the EIB network.
Thanks for taking my call, Rush.
It's an honor to talk with you.
Thank you, sir.
Uh, I'm calling in reference to the increased number of unwed women.
I think it is a direct result of society's uh view of sex.
Um in the past, uh, we've kind of equated sex and marriage on the same plane, but now uh marriage is by no means a prerequisite for sex, and therefore yet another incentive for marriage has been removed.
Yeah, well, maybe.
Uh but the free love movement's been around for a long time, and it never really died.
Uh in uh I mean, it's it's gone through cycles where it was suppressed now and then.
I mean, the immorality always has cycles to it.
But I mean, the idea that that um uh this new phenomenon of more women choosing to be unmarried than married.
When I when I of course I wouldn't admit women to admit this, wouldn't expect them to admit it in read it to the New York Times, yeah, I don't want to be married because I can have all the sex I want.
They talked about the freedom and all that, and that may be part of the freedom, but they just they don't want to say that.
But um uh I'm looking, I think there are a lot of factors, social factors, culture factors, uh, uh generational factors.
I mean, a lot of the women in this story uh were baby boomers.
Uh and the baby boomers have, and I'm one.
I've always been a me, me, me, me, and then me.
Uh you know, baby boomer, when you first meet a baby boomer and say, hi, how are you?
To baby boomer, will tell you everything you ever wanted to know about him, and then we'll say, enough about me.
What do you think of me?
Totally totally self-absorbed.
I'm doing my best to avoid personal input into this story.
Because they're just some things that I try to keep private.
I have such bad luck with privacy.
Uh, but but as to your theory.
Uh uh, let me think.
I I I better just shut up about it.
John in San Diego, welcome to the EIB network.
Hi.
Russ, how are you doing today?
Good, sir.
Thank you.
Oh, good, man.
I appreciate taking my call.
Huge dittoes.
Hey, I just want to uh say a couple things.
Uh one thing, um, I thought it was really despicable back in uh, you know, nineteen ninety-one, whenever uh, you know, Bush made his uh no new taxes promise, and how the Democrats bamboo bamboozled him and uh to breaking that promise and and now here we are um two thousand and seven and two thousand six, two thousand seven, and how um whatever it takes to get into power, uh the Democrats will they will you know go to no depth to You know what?
John, you're gonna you have to hold your phone.
I misread the clock.
I thought I had a minute longer than I had here when I took your call.
Can you hold on for a couple minutes?
Oh, absolutely, yeah.
That's great.
Thanks, but appreciate your patience.
And we'll be back, and we will continue here in just a sec.
All right.
We are back now to John and in uh in San Diego.
John, thanks for your patience here.
Why don't you start from the beginning?
Okay.
Um, I just wanted to say that back in you know 91 when uh Bush 41, when they bamboozled them over the you know, the whole no new taxes thing.
I remember on your TV show that you had showed that.
And it and I never really got over that.
I I thought that that was really despicable.
And you know, now here it is, you know, in modern times, and and we have uh Democrats that they'll do anything to get back into power, and at the expense of our troops and the expense of really the future national security of our country.
And I I think that's you know, it's really awful thing, but um I I and another thing I think is that the Democrats are very, very short-sighted because uh, you know, they they keep playing uh taking plays from their same old playbook.
And just like in ninety-three, ninety four, um, I think that now, you know, they I I believe that they're gonna self-destruct over time because once you turn them loose, um, you know, they're gonna start making um a lot of really uh big mistakes.
And I think what you have to do is just be there to point it out, just like you were there in 93 and 94 to point it out um how outrageous what they were doing.
Uh yes, but there's a you know what?
I'm glad you s you uttered the uh the last part of that.
I have a I have a different theory now.
Uh I expected I think they imploded the last six years.
I think they imploded all last year.
I thought there was no way the American people were gonna reward or even want to invest in that kind of enraged, irrational hatred.
And yet they did.
Well, they may not have, but the practical outcome, the results of the elections was they did.
The difference in 1993 uh was two big house scandals, the post office and the bank.
And the Republicans had an agenda.
And the Republicans had a a uh they didn't announce it until October, but before the election, but that's when most people start paying attention.
There was elected conservative leadership that was driving that train.
And so in addition to the Democrat implosion, there was an alternative.
Now, if you take it back to this last election, uh it's hard for Democrats to implode because they weren't in power, but they were imploding in human terms as far as I'm concerned.
It was just it was it was outrageous.
But the drive-by media is gonna be there to cover for them at every stage.
And when they implode, it's not gonna be referred to as imploding.
When they crack up, it's not gonna be called cracking up.
It's gonna be defended.
It's gonna be applauded.
Uh the Democratic Party is becoming more and more fringe and wacko by the day.
And yet the drive-by media doesn't portray them that way.
They portrayed them the way they did the old mainstream guys.
Plus, they're constantly attacking Republicans.
And the Republicans last fall didn't have any agenda.
Republicans gave nobody the reason to vote for them, particularly the way they had governed.
And you had the specter of Iraq hanging over the.
So I I think it'd be a mistake.
Short answer to your question.
It would be a mistake to assume that the other party is simply going to implode, and the American people are going to go, wow, we can't have this anymore.
Uh because if they're not given an alternative, uh there's no reason to vote for that either.
So you can't just have the theory that they're going to implode is sit back and wait for this to happen at some point.
Because I've been there and done that, and I I still am amazed, even though I know why the election turned out the way it did.
I'm still stunned that it did.
I don't mind admitting this.
Uh it goes against every granule of human nature I know.
There's nothing inspiring about who the Democrats are today.
There is nothing that that makes you want to join their team.
Uh look at this first hundred hours.
Where is it?
No excitement about it.
Nobody knows even what hour we're at in terms of the first hundred, and nobody knows what's been done.
We don't know.
Well, we do here because we know these things, but the average America couldn't care less about the Democrats' first hundred hours.
Or anything else that they're doing.
So preoccupied with everybody uh uh is uh everybody is about a rock.
But it's gonna take more than just letting these guys implode because it's gonna have to be a real implosion.
A drive-by media is gonna prop these people up and make them appear mainstream every day and uh every night.
It's it's their party.
Here are the details on the latest from the Ninth Circus.
The uh U.S. Ninth Circus, Court of Appeals, Federal Appeals Court, today vacated the sentence of the Millennium Bomber.
Ahmed Rassam, who was arrested near the U.S. Canadian border and convicted of plotting to bomb LAX.
Rassam was arrested December 1999 at Port Angeles, Washington, when he drove off a ferry from British Columbia with a trunk full of explosives.
Prosecutors said he was intent on bombing the uh airport on the eve of the millennium.
Now, you this is not an insignificant story, as you know.
This is this is really highlighted in the path to 9-11.
This is the thing that the Clinton administration and Sandy Burglar were doing their best to say this was a result of our policy, and this it was not.
This it was not the result of an anti-terror policy.
It was just a sharp customs agent who saw something fishy about this guy from the moment he drove up to her station.
And uh he he was forced out of line.
They examined his car and so forth, and they found him with all these explosives, and the court trial led to the conclusion he was he was on his way down to LA LAX for a uh Y2K bombing.
He was sentenced to 22 years in prison after being convicted of all nine charges, but the Ninth Circus reversed his conviction on one of the charges and sent the case back to a lower court judge to issue a new sentence and explain the rationale between the original 22-year term.
Now, the decision doesn't necessarily mean the defendant will get a shorter term, as federal prosecutors said the original sentence was too light.
Judges are given wide latitude to sentence defendants as they see fit.
So he's not out of jail.
Uh it's just that the Ninth Circus has uh has struck once again.
More audio sound bites yesterday.
Martin Luther King Day offered an opportunity for civil rights leaders to engage in hate speech.
The uh free speech segment last night on the increasingly little watched CBS uh evening news with Katie Courick featured John Lewis.
And this is part of what Lewis had to say in his exciting commentary.
If Dr. King could speak today, he would tell us to stop this madness and bring our young people home.
He was said that war is an obsolete ineffective tool of our foreign policy.
Wow.
He was said that we must struggle against injustice.
We must stand up for what we believe.
But if peace is our goal, then peacefully end can only be secured by peaceful means.
He was said we must find a way to live together as brothers and sisters.
Oh, we were perished as fools.
Well, this uh this uh happened to be said the same day Hillary Clinton was calling for more troops to wipe out the uh Taliban in Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.
John Lewis telling us what Martin Luther King would have said about the Iraq war.
Uh here's Representative Lewis, by the way, as we go back to our audio archives on the House floor, March 21st, 1995, during the contract with America debate, specifically the school Lunch debate, this is what Lewis said about Republicans.
They're coming for our children.
They're coming for the poor.
They're coming for the sick, the elderly and the disabled.
Yes, he's trying to say Republicans wanted to wipe those people out.
Just get rid of them because they got in the way.
Of course, it's Democrats in Tiburon and Chappaquinaker don't want these people anywhere near them.
And don't want their values and their property to be devalued by the presence of such scum.
And yet, Democrats claim it's people like you and me, folks, who wish to disrespect, dishonor, ignore harm, hurt, damage the poor, the hungry, the thirsty, the infirm, the disinfirm, the dysentery, the elderly, and the disabled.
But the piece de resistance.
Last Friday in Washington at a forum on black leadership.
Councilman Charles Barron, Democrat from Brooklyn, New York, said this.
We have such bad black people in power nowadays.
I don't even call them Uncle Toms and Auntie Mamas anymore, because that's an insult to Uncle Tom and Auntie Mama.
These folk are worse.
It's not enough to get somebody in a powerful position that looks like you.
Condoleez looks like you.
She don't even look like us.
But Condoleez Rice looks like you.
Clarence Thomas looks like you.
These are people, Colin Powell looks like you.
But we can no longer have people that look like us in power.
We have to build a movement like we're doing in New York City to put people in power who think like us, act for us, and have our best interests at heart.
Now, on that last part, just so there's no misunderstanding.
If you're trying to amass political power, fine and dandy.
Get the people who agree with you and think like you, and then go out and try to win it at the ballot box.
But I thought this first part of this, I thought the the civil rights movement was based totally on race.
Which is skin color, is it not?
I thought the whole objective was diversity in the way people looked.
I thought the whole point was to get a certain percentage of every minority in every institution and business as possible, because that represented fairness.
And it was all based on the quota of the color of the skin of the people who held various positions and jobs.
Now all of a sudden, this guy is saying it's not enough to get somebody in a powerful position that looks like you.
Well, I thought that's what this was all about.
I thought that's how we were going to say that we're getting rid of the original sin of slavery and discrimination and all the am I wrong about this?
It has been about skin.
Now I know as a practical matter for the longest time that leftists and civil rights leaders have no respect and in fact disdain for conservative blacks, and they've made no secret about it to try to destroy Clarence Thomas, which is why I've always said the civil rights movement's not about race.
They've always wanted us to think it is.
They've always wanted us to say that if you don't let a minority of of any color have the job, then you're a racist and sexist.
But we weren't telling us what we thought of those persons' views.
All the while we were saying, oh, wait a minute, I we're not a racist, I just don't like liberals.
No, you're just a closet racist.
You don't like black people.
No, that's not it at all.
Now we're being told by Charles Barron, Democrat Brooklyn, that it's not enough to have people who look like us.
Or him or you.
You gotta get people the way we think.
So once again, L. Rush ball on the cutting edge.
Civil rights movement.
It isn't about race.
And it isn't about improving a lot of blacks.
It's about liberalism.
And it's about big government.
It's about coalescing power among elite.
Feminism, not about women, not really.
It's about liberalism.
Otherwise, every discriminated woman in the country would be a cause celeb for the feminists.
But go talk to Kathleen Willie, Juanita Broderick, uh, Paula Jones, Monica Lewinsky.
They were nothing but trash.
Particularly Paula Jones, she was from a trailer park.
Feminism is as much elitism as liberalism is anywhere.
She was from a trailer park.
She was trash.
They wouldn't let her live in Tiburon, even if she were a liberal.
They wouldn't want because she moving in from a trailer park.
These people are elitists, they are phony baloney, plastic banana good time rock and rollers to the to the hilt.
But thank you, Mr. Baron.
For inadvertently, I'm sure letting us know that the civil rights movement has nothing to do with race.
Back in a second.
I have been uh referencing the Democrats' first 100 hours.
There is something they are about to do.
And I do want to inform you about it and alert you to it.
The Wall Street Journal today has a great editorial.
They call it the OPEC Energy Security Act.
It's titled the editorial.
House Democrats have finally and by the way, keep in mind that as I read this to you, the price of oil is now below $51 a barrel.
Gasoline prices at the pump are likely to fall even more.
I had a friend that was in Minneapolis last week, $1.99 regular.
The average retail price, uh retail price of a gallon of regular gas.
Fell four cents from Friday to Monday to $2.23, according to the Triple A, and the all price information service.
Gas prices are down four percent this year.
And it there are stocks and inventories of uh of crude.
OPEC is concerned about it.
But here come the House Democrats to save the day from all this.
House Democrats have finally released the details of their energy security bill, which will be voted on this week, and they must be cursing their rotten luck just when they want to stick it to big oil.
For alleged price gouging, oil and home heating costs are plunging.
Never mind.
This was a campaign theme amid three dollar gasoline and a detail like two dollar gas isn't about stop Democrats now.
This bill is said to promote America's energy independence.
But the biggest winner may be OPEC.
It's a lengthy, complicated bill.
But the central idea is simple.
Raise taxes on domestic oil producers, and then spend the money to subsidize ethanol, solar energy, windmills, so long as they're not on Cape Cod, and so on.
But if you increase the cost of domestic oil production by ten billion, you are ensuring that U.S. imports of OPEC oil will rise and domestic production will fall.
So while the Democrats are out there talking about we need energy independence, their legislation, the House Democrats, would cause just the other.
It's the opposite.
The bill also includes a strategic energy efficiency and renewable reserve fund for alternative fuels.
That sounds a lot like the Carter era synthetic fuels corporation.
Democrats also insist that the big five oil companies have received sweetheart deals from the government that have ripped off taxpayers.
Uh taxpayers.
So let's take a look.
The most controversial issue involves six billion dollars in royalty payments that oil companies are said to owe the government for oil pumps from federal waters, but the facts suggest otherwise.
These were leases for drilling rights in the Gulf of Mexico signed between oil companies and the Clinton administration's interior department in 1988 or 98 and 99.
And at that time, the world oil price had fallen to as low as ten dollars a barrel.
The contracts were signed without a requirement of royalty payments if the price of oil rose above thirty-five dollars.
They're trying to pinch this on the Bush administration and a stop to their big oil buddies when in fact this original uh waiver, if you will, talks uh go go dates back to Clinton.
But the fact the reality here that whatever's happening in the market is lowering prices at the pump and for crude is irrelevant.
The Democrats are going to go ahead with this.
Now, this is one of these things that's going to meet severe opposition in the Senate.
Uh there are even some Democrats in the Senate who they don't want to get anywhere near punishing big oil.
Or if you look at average Democrats' enemies' lists, just look at their enemies' list.
Big pharmaceutical, big drug, uh, big oil, big food, big fat, Walmart, you name it.
Uh corporate success stories are their enemies list.
Capitalism Essentially, is their enemies list.
So they are working on this as part of their first 100 hours.
Didn't want to forget that.
Well, thanks to all of you for being with us today.
I know most of you have been with us for the whole three hours and wish there was more.
And there will be more tomorrow.
And I make a promise, we'll do a fourth hour pretty soon too.
Maybe a fourth hour on 24.
Who knows?
But it'll happen soon.
That I promise you.
In the meantime, have a great next 21 hours or so, but make sure you're back here.
Same time tomorrow as we rev it up once again.
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