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Jan. 16, 2008 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:34
January 16, 2008, Wednesday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
What do you mean, what am I going to do today?
I'm going to host a program today.
I'm going to deal with whatever comes up on the program today.
You mean, how am I going to top yesterday?
Well, yesterday, everybody said, how am I going to top Monday?
It happened, right?
We just let it flow.
Just let it flow, whatever happens out there.
Great to have you with us.
Fastest week in media.
Here we are already at Wednesday.
And I am Rush Limboy, your highly trained broadcast specialist serving humanity and all living things simply by showing up.
It's that simple.
Telephone number if you want to be on the program today, 800-282-2882.
Email address rush.
Or I'm sorry, lrushbow at EIBnet.com.
We've changed the email address and is now lrushbow at EIBnet.com.
Boy, the drive-bys, the drive-bys are beside themselves with the results of the Michigan primary last night.
They cannot get it through their heads.
They're just skunked that Republicans actually voted against McCain.
They cannot believe it.
And so now it's time to trash Republicans.
I don't care what anybody wants to say.
Mitt Romney is now the frontrunner.
That may not last because this is a very, very fluid situation.
But here you have McCain who lost, and nobody's out saying, well, he's got to win.
He's got to win South Carolina.
He's got to win South Carolina.
He's finished.
He's done.
Nobody's saying that.
They continue to say it about Romney in every primary.
He's leading the delegate count now.
I mean, even some of the commentators on our side are a little flummoxed and upset about this.
We'll get into a full bore analysis of the results last night.
It's really not all that complicated, but it is fascinating in just a second.
A couple little stories here I want to share with you before we get into the meat and potatoes political stuff.
This is from Reuters.
Some elderly adults may be more susceptible to fraud because of changes in their brain that affect judgment and decision-making, according to researchers yesterday.
In a series of tests, they tried to identify common traits among seasoned citizens who had difficulty making decisions and spotting anything misleading to determine what makes them vulnerable to deception.
Our research suggests that senior citizens who fall prey to fraudulent advertising are not simply gullible, depressed, lonely, or stupid.
Rather, it is truly more of a medical or neurological problem, said Natalie Denberg, a neuroscientist at the University of Iowa.
This explains it to me.
This explains seasoned citizen Democrat voters susceptible to fraud, susceptible to deception, vulnerable to lies and misrepresentations.
By the way, the big story out of California, but then I'll tell you who gets credit for raising this story about the utility companies controlling your thermostat via remote control, the American thinker Thomas Lifson's bunch, and Lifson himself actually got onto this and made it public.
Even the New York Times credited the American thinker on it.
The bottom line is that the people in California trying to get this done have canceled it now.
They've rolled this back.
There was just too much of an outcry.
And so they're going to table it for a while to have more public comment about this.
Now, they're not getting rid of it altogether.
They're going to discuss it some more, which means they're going to try to figure out how they can do this next time with nobody finding out about it.
This is who liberals are.
They want to control your thermostat.
You won't have any control over it.
This is California, and this is big government extraordinaire, sloughing the responsibility off to utility companies.
And all of this based on a hoax, a scientific hoax of man-made global warming.
So it's been beaten back for now, but the thing is, you can't ever stop fighting these people because they don't ever go away.
And they're going to be right now, they're going to be calculating how they can get this done without anybody finding out about it next time until it's too late.
Sort of like what the Senate tried to do with the amnesty bill.
Under cover of darkness, no politics involved, no debate, no committee hearings, no nothing, because they knew it would be opposed dramatically if people found out and people found out.
Have you seen this story?
More babies being born in the United States, unlike the trend in Europe.
The birth rate is up for all groups, but the increase for Hispanics is biggest.
Bucking the trend in many other wealthy industrialized nations.
United States, this is my newscaster voice.
The United States seems to be experiencing a baby boomlet, reporting the largest number of children born in 45 years.
Experts believe there is a mix of reasons.
Listen to these reasons from the experts why there's a baby boomlet in the United States.
A decline in contraceptives use, meaning not as many people using condoms.
A drop in access to abortion.
Do you believe we're producing a lot of baby?
Our birth rate replacement levels were suffering.
You factor in abortion, and our replacement birth rates were suffering, and they have been for a while.
We were barely reproducing enough little crumb crunchers to keep the population steady, particularly with all these illegals flooding the country.
So now, that good news has to be turned into bad news.
And the bad news is, well, yeah, but there's a drop in access to abortion.
I mean, that explains it.
How sick, how absolutely sick this is the Associated Press.
Oh, there's two other reasons why the baby boomlet is happening according to experts, poor education and poverty.
So having kids, if you're poorly educated or in poverty, why, that's bad.
And of course, minorities and the poor, hardest hit here, not to mention women.
There are cultural reasons as well.
Hispanics as a group have higher fertility rates, about 40% higher than the U.S. overall.
And experts say Americans, especially those in Middle America, view children more favorably than people in many of the westernized countries.
What a.
Just say this and chalk it up to experts.
And we're supposed to sit here and go, oh, okay.
Americans, especially those in Middle America, you know what the drive-by's think of, you people in Middle America.
You're not much higher on the scale than those hayseed hicks in the South.
You're just like them, except you don't sound like you're from the South, so you're at least a little bit more tolerable.
You don't sound like these people from Mississippi and Nolans and Alabama.
Iowans don't sound that way.
And Missourians, well, some of them sound that way, but not very many.
So you're a little bit more tolerable.
But you people in the middle America, middle of America, you view children more favorably than people in many other westernized countries.
What does view children more favorably?
Nan Marie Astone, associate professor of population, family, and reproductive health at Johns Hopkins University, says, well, yes, Americans like children.
We're the only people who respond to prosperity by saying, let's have another kid.
We're the only people who respond to prosperity by saying, let's have another kid.
So what do we have?
No, it didn't work with me.
No, prosperity takes many different forms than having children for me.
What?
Yeah, we are prosperous.
We're prosperous in the middle of a recession.
We're prosperous.
And we're having all these kids.
We're very prosperous.
And yet there's a recession descending.
Demographers say it's too soon to know whether the sudden increase in births is the start of a trend.
Yeah, we have to wait and see.
For now, I'd call it a noticeable blip, said Brady Hamilton.
You know, this just upsets them all to hell.
And what upsets them all to hell here is their claim that abortion access is more difficult.
And that's why we're having too many damn kids.
If you ever doubted the pro-aborts and how sick they are in terms of moving their cause, this story goes a long way to helping understand that.
The 2006 fertility rate, 2.1 children, the highest level since 1971.
Fertility rates often rise among immigrants who leave their homelands for a better life.
An example, the rate among Mexican-born women in the U.S., 3.2, but the overall rate for Mexico just 2.4, according to the Pew Hispanic Center.
Yeah, they're more optimistic about their future here, said a Pew Center demographer.
All right.
Well, that's that.
That's not the sum total of the non-political news, but it's a good start.
We'll take a brief time out.
We'll take a look at Michigan and the audio sound bites when we come back, sit tight.
Well, you know, it was a Democrat debate last night.
It was out in Las Vegas.
It was on PMSNBC, and it was bad.
It was rotten.
Mrs. Clinton was back to looking like Nurse Ratchet.
All of these people look bored as they can be.
It's a 90-minute debate felt like 90 years.
And it was amazing to watch these Democrats sat there and explained in great detail, either with their stimulus package or what they're going to do to save the subprime market or how they were going to ruin the United States economy.
And they were doing it with glee.
Now, that's not what they were saying, of course, but that's, if you know how to read the stitches on the fastball, as do I, then that's exactly what they were saying.
Bad news for Mrs. Clinton in Michigan last night.
She was the only one.
Well, I think Kucinich was on a ballot and Gravelle were on a ballot, but those votes don't count in Michigan because there were no delegates awarded.
The state has been disqualified by the Democrat National Committee for violating the committee's desire on the date of the primary.
But still, the Democrats could vote.
And Mrs. Clinton, she didn't do that.
Do you realize 70% of the black vote in Michigan voted uncommitted, voted against her?
In fact, you might say that Mrs. Clinton, in fact, Megan Kendall last night on Fox is describing these exit polls before they had called the Republican side for Romney.
He said, oh, yeah, Mrs. Clinton was running against Mr. Uncommitted.
And I was thinking, that made perfect sense.
You know, single women, single women are one of the targets of Mrs. Clinton.
The poorer, the better.
The stupider the better.
And single women, they are very familiar with that guy, Mr. Uncommitted.
I am that guy.
Well, I have been.
And by the way, one other observation.
I got an email note from somebody.
This is actually a great point.
They did, by the way, maintain the truce last night in the uncivil war in the Democrat debate.
But remember, one of the things this is all about is Obama trying to capture the magic and the image of Martin Luther King Jr. and Mrs. Clinton saying, screw that.
Martin Luther King Jr. wouldn't have got anything done if it weren't for a president, Lyndon Johnson.
So you can know all the great civil rights leaders in the world that you want, but without a president that can get things done, it wouldn't have mattered.
And of course, that offended everybody on the black side because, well, how dare you put down Martin Luther King?
I'm not putting it down Martin Luther King.
I'm saying what he did was great, but it wouldn't have happened without LBJ.
So the question is this.
How come next Monday, the nation's going to, for the most part, shut down for Martin Luther King Day?
How come LBJ Day is not a national holiday?
How come in all of the, well, you go up to Harlem, Martin Luther King Boulevard.
I haven't found Lyndon Baines Johnson Boulevard anywhere up in Texas.
You know, you just, I mean, do we need an LBJ Day now, Mrs. Clinton?
And by the way, Mrs. Clinton, you are no LBJ, and I got no brief for LBJ.
But the only reason the Civil Rights Act passed was because LBJ was able to get some Republicans.
A greater percentage of Republicans in the Senate voted for the Civil Rights Act than did Democrats.
And Hillary Clinton's not going to get Republicans to join much of what she wants to do.
All right, on the Republican side, you look at these exit polls on the Republican side last night.
Mitt Romney beat Mike Huckabee among evangelicals.
Now, we've been living under a bunch of misconceptions that have been put out there by the drive-bys, and that is that the evangelical vote is monolithic.
And the evangelical vote is mad.
They have been ignored.
They have been used.
They have been abused.
They've been discarded by the Republican establishment.
And so they're flocking, no pun intended, to Governor Huckabee, not in Michigan.
It happened in Iowa.
It did not happen in New Hampshire.
It did not happen in Wyoming, certainly, and it didn't happen in Michigan.
Romney beat Huckabee among evangelicals.
Romney beat McCain among those who support the Iraq War.
Now, how do you figure, McCain's out there trying to sell his leadership and his prescience on advocating the surge, and yet Romney beat McCain among those who support the Iraq War?
Romney also won big over McCain and conservatives.
McCain got 11% of the conservative vote in Michigan yesterday.
11%.
But in addition to that, Romney won among people who cared more about the issues.
And he came in a statistical tie with McCain, with those people who care more about character.
McCain, you know, his independents and Democrats, that is who gave him the vast majority of his support, but it wasn't enough.
And this is a state McCain won in 2000.
And the Democrats were free to do whatever they wanted in Michigan yesterday because their votes on the Democrat side didn't count.
So all these moderates and independents that gave McCain Michigan in 2007 could have done the same thing, crossed the line, gone in there and voted for McCain.
They did not.
Most of them ended up voting for Hillary or uncommitted.
Now, the drive-bys, and even some on our side, are just beside themselves with this.
Here, listen to Mort Kondracki last night on Fox News election coverage.
He said this about Mitt Romney and the Republicans.
His great advantage is that the regular Republican conservatives are the people who rule the Republican Party.
And he seems to be ahead among them in the primary so far.
Really, Mort, why is this a surprise?
I'm sitting here, I'm watching all of this analysis last night, not just on Fox, all over the place.
And I get sometimes frustrated because I've been saying ever since Iowa and New Hampshire, folks, wait until Republicans start voting in these things.
Iowa, you had a bunch of independents that are allowed to vote.
Democrats, New Hampshire, of course, you could bus in from out of state if you wanted to.
I said, the drive-bys are propping up these two guys that Republicans are not going to vote for and are not voting for, and that's Huckabee and McCain.
Wait till we get to states or Republicans to go out and vote and see what happens.
And you see what happened last night.
And yet the drive-bys are stunned, more angry about it than anything.
Somebody even last night said, well, yeah, this is good for Romney, but it just puts him back to square one.
Puts him back to square one.
He has won two primaries, come in second in two primaries.
He's ahead in a delegate count.
You have to say Romney right now is the frontrunner.
That's not going to hold up.
Dick Morris has a piece today.
The Republican Party's in chaos.
You don't have anybody that's taking over.
One guy wins here, one guy wins there.
We might not have a candidate or a nominee, Morris says, after Super Tuesday on February 5th.
Who knows what's going to happen?
But the notion that the Republican Party is in chaos, it's the Democrats who are in chaos.
It's the Democrats who can't keep everybody under reservation.
Republican Party only appears to be in chaos because the drive-bys in their pre-analysis have been totally misunderstanding who votes in Republican primaries.
Conservatives do.
And when conservatives dominate a Republican population in a state, guess what's going to happen?
It ain't going to be McCain, and it's not going to be Governor Huckabee.
And now they're saying, well, you know, Huckabee is a lock to win South Carolina.
Why?
How do we know this?
Well, you know, Mitt's not going to get a bounce out of Michigan.
It just isn't going to translate.
Really?
McCain didn't get a bounce out of New Hampshire.
I'd venture so far as to say McCain may be cooked.
Let me join the analysis.
Everybody's saying, Romney doesn't win New Hampshire.
He's finished.
He doesn't go on to New Hampshire and why he's done.
If Romney doesn't take Michigan, why he's out of there?
We're never hearing that about McCain or Huckabee.
But what, you know, McCain won Michigan in 2007.
Well, what happens if he goes down to South Carolina, which he also, you know, has high hopes for what if he doesn't win there?
His last great hope may be Arizona, his home state, and that's not even a lock.
Huckabee, he can't get more than 15 or 16% once you get out of Iowa.
You know, where are the death knells for Huckabee?
If Huckabee doesn't do well in South Carolina, it could be done.
I mean, these people doing the analysis on our side of the aisle and of our side are blowing this big time, and they're risking their professional reputations here by getting this so wrong and doing it on purpose because they're trying to depress conservative turnout.
Here's a break.
We'll be back.
Democrats are just salivating along with the drive-bys, over-convincing you that we are in a recession.
Not that it's imminent, but that we're in it.
And last night in the Democrat debate, and I haven't had a chance to read in detail the audio soundbite roster.
We might have, we got some soundbites of the debate listening, but I got to tell you something, folks, I'm really, it was so boring and it dragged on so long.
It was a funereal.
I mean, it just was.
The lighting was horrible.
It was so bad, it was good.
And one of the things they kept talking about, they got into arguments, but the stimulus package.
Got to stimulate the economy.
Hell yes, Limboy, we're going into a recession.
So Mrs. Clinton's proposing all kinds of things, a $70 billion stimulus package.
Big whoop.
She also proposed a freeze in foreclosures, a freeze in mortgage interest rates and so forth.
She would destroy the mortgage industry.
She would destroy it.
I don't know if she'd actually implement this stuff, but this is the, it's the epitome of pandering to people in this.
And then, you know, a lot of people are really, really worried that the equity in their house, the value is plummeting.
Even though they're paying their mortgages, they're concerned about this.
I think more so than the price of gasoline.
So the Democrats pander here.
But notice what Democrats or anybody, and people talk about stimulus packages all the time.
The greatest stimulus package on the face of the earth is a tax cut.
It is a tax cut.
I mean, we were talking about health care yesterday with the guy in the last hour that call from Pinehurst, North Carolina.
If you missed it, this is the guy that was rather accusatory of me on what he said was my wealth, which insulates me in his mind from the hardships of life.
And if I've lost my way, these things come up periodically, you know, that you're out of touch.
The first time it ever happened was some caller from Nacogdoches, Texas.
And his complaint, you don't have any trouble paying electric bills.
You don't know what life's like out here.
And I, you know, I just blew up.
And I blew up yesterday at this guy.
He said, I made $100,000 one year and my wife don't make any.
We don't make anything in Nick.
Would you just save anything?
You know, $100,000 isn't bad.
I never made $100,000 until I was over 40.
Well into my 40s.
And I just turned 57 last week.
Anyway, stimulus package, best thing you can do is cut taxes.
We were talking about health care with this guy yesterday.
You don't know what it costs.
And I guess I do because I pay for it.
I don't want to mess with the insurance because it's a hassle.
I'm lucky.
I've had to mess with it in the past.
Didn't want to.
I pay for a lot of other people's health insurance, folks, in addition to my own.
I am an employer.
Don't tell me I don't know this stuff.
But I had an interesting thought.
I want some of you to check this next time you have a chance.
Find out how many of you just check and see if your property tax every year is higher than what you're paying for health insurance.
Not what your benefit is.
If your company provides you 80% of what your out-of-pocket health care expenses are, find out if your property tax is higher than your health care.
Yours isn't, Brian.
You know what your property tax?
Well, you must live in a dump.
You bought what?
The house?
Well, okay.
Well, my property tax, I'd be ashamed to tell you, but it dwarfs my health care coverage.
And I'll bet a lot of people's property tax is higher than what you're paying on health care.
And would you ever stop to think, well, maybe, maybe somebody ought to do something about your property tax and cutting that?
What kind of stimulus would that be?
Or maybe further income tax rate reductions or making these current tax cuts permanent instead of Mrs. Clinton wants to give 250 or 300 bucks per person.
Big whoop.
We've been through this before.
The last time somebody came up with this point, who was it?
George H.W. Bush did a stimulus package?
There wasn't a Clinton.
I forget what it was.
But it was enough to go out and buy a muffler for your car.
Another thing with a stimulus package, you know what's going to happen?
Most people are going to take it and retire debt with it.
They're not going to, they're not going to, well, that's what happened last time anyway, statistically.
The, oh, yeah, home insurance here in Florida could be just as much as health care.
And then if you got to go out and get other kinds of insurance, a hurricane and all this, look at your insurance and what that's costing you and what your property taxes are compared to health care.
And I'll bet you that you'll be stunned to learn that in most of your cases, not all of you, of course, but in most cases, you're being taxed or charged far more for other things in life than your health care is costing you.
Check that out.
Now, here is Nora O'Donnell.
We're going to go back to the audio soundbites on the drive-bys dealing with Michigan.
This is, well, she says you got to call them traditional Republicans.
When you take a look inside the exit polls, you see that a major reason is that those considered traditional Republicans turned out in big numbers while Independents and Democrats were just not the factor that they had been for John McCain in New Hampshire or quite frankly, what they were eight years ago in Michigan when McCain beat George W. Bush.
Well, duh.
Why?
These are supposedly the smartest, the most informed people on the face of the earth, and they are ignorant.
They just assume because they love McCain that everybody else does.
And then when real Republicans, finally, traditional Republicans, and they say that with disdain, show up at a primary and McCain gets 11%, the drive-bys just can't believe this.
And so they conclude that we're all just stupid or we have some kind of incorrect animus, false animus against McCain.
We don't like McCain for some reason.
When you take a look inside the exit polls, you see a major reason is those considered traditional Republicans turned out in big numbers.
Wonder why.
You people have been driving turnout.
You've been infuriating and insulting Republicans in a whole primary process.
And Republicans finally had a chance to not only tell you what for, but to vote for somebody they really want rather than let you elect our candidate.
And people know that you guys in the drive-bys are doing this because we know when you elevate a Republican, it's not a conservative.
And when you start trying to trash certain Republicans, we know that they are, in your mind, conservatives.
So, you know, these people just, they're plummets by this.
They just don't understand it.
And to explain it to themselves, to start insulting you and me and what a bunch of blockheads we are and how we just don't understand how wonderful McCain and Huckabee are and what they might mean for the country.
Among evangelicals, here are the numbers.
Romney, 34%, Huckabee, 29 among evangelicals.
Drive-bys don't believe that either.
How can that be?
Why, Huckabee is the...
They think they're all, you know, a bunch of idiots and monolithic.
And they'll respond to all this stuff.
Romney also beat McCain among registered Republicans 40 to 26 percent.
Drive-bys say that could bode well for Romney.
Really?
It could bode well that Republicans prefer a conservative to somebody who's not.
None of this is a surprise.
If these people would just listen to me more often, their jobs would be much easier.
They would understand things that they apparently don't.
Now, we've talked on this program on many occasions about our old buddy at the Associated Press, Ron Fournier.
I didn't know until last night that Mr. Fournier, a reporter, also is a columnist for the Associated Press at random times.
And the title of his column is On Deadline.
Now, I thought you were either a reporter, or as Bob Woodruff says, a reporter, or you were a columnist, but I didn't think that you combined the two.
Now, I know a lot of columnists go out there and report for their columns, but a reporter is a beat writer following around.
I didn't know you turned those guys into columnists whenever you wanted to.
Nope, nope, nope, it's not analysis HR.
Here's the editor's note at the end of this piece.
Ron Fournier covers politics for the Associated Press.
On deadline is an occasional column.
Doesn't say Fournier occasionally attempts analysis and usually gets it wrong.
It says on deadlines a column.
You want to hear how this thing starts?
Mitt won authenticity lost.
Mitt Romney's victory in Michigan was a defeat for authenticity in politics.
The former Massachusetts governor pandered to voters, distorted his opponent's record, and continued to show why he's the most malleable and least credible major presidential candidate.
And it worked.
Oh, damn it, Ron.
It's politics.
What are you going to do?
None of this happens on the Democrat side.
That whole debate last night was a giant pander.
Ron, the whole Democrat campaign is a giant pander.
The man who spoke hard truths to Michigan lost.
Of all the reasons John McCain deserved a better result Tuesday night, his gamble on the economy stands out.
The Arizona senator had the temerity to tell voters that a candidate who says traditional auto manufacturing jobs are coming back is either naive or is not talking straight with the people of Michigan and America.
Instead of pandering, McCain said political leaders must embrace green technologies.
That's the future.
That's what we want.
Romney jumped all over McCain, playing the fears of voters in a state with the nation's highest unemployment rate.
I've heard people say the auto jobs are gone and they're not coming back.
Romney told his audiences.
Well, baloney, I'm going to fight for every single good job.
Of course he'd fight for every job.
So would McCain or any future president.
But goes on to trash Romney.
Now, that's right.
You know, free press.
But then this guy crosses over, goes back to reporting.
I'm never going to believe another thing this guy says.
Well, that's not right.
I'm just going to filter it through what I already knew existed anyway, a huge liberal bias.
Anyway, I must have a take a brief time out here because I just noticed the clock is zipping by.
Your phone calls next.
After this, don't go anywhere.
I don't believe this.
I do not believe that.
Listen to this.
Hillary Clinton has put out a press conference.
Hillary Clinton, or a press release.
Hillary Clinton, joined by New Jersey Governor John Corzon and Michigan Governor Jennifer Grandholm, discuss solutions for the American economy on a conference call today.
This is absurd.
She's going to have a conference call with two governors whose states are fiscal basket cases to discuss how to improve the economy.
It's worse than absurd.
It is stupid.
And she just had a shocking night in Michigan last night.
I mean, you know, 69, 70% of the African-American vote went over there and voted for Mr. Uncommitted.
Not her.
I mean, people in Michigan, you believe this?
Hillary on a press conference call with Jennifer Granholm to discuss solutions to the economy?
Martin in Ann Arbor, Michigan, speaking of the devil, welcome to the EIB network, sir.
Great to have you here.
Hey, Rush.
Mega Dittos.
Thank you.
Hey, I was curious about your opinion.
I kind of find it to be like non-conservative, really, for a couple of the Republican, you know, are running about Michigan's one-state recession and what they're going to do to fix it, too.
But to me, that goes right against conservative principles as far as small government versus big government and everything else.
I don't see it as being a federal government's problem without or, you know.
What specifically are you referring to out there, Martin?
I'm 99% sure Romney and Huckabee have both talked about, you know, Michigan's one-state recession and what they want to do to fix it and save the down the state.
If you're talking about Romney saying he wanted to inject $20 billion a year of federal money into revitalizing the auto industry, is that what you're referring to?
I guess.
I mean, it just sounds to me like popular or populism like you've been talking about.
It just sounds like I don't mean to be, don't take this the wrong way, but if you're going to call here and be upset over the injection of big government populism in the campaign and not be able to tell me what it is, I'm a little suspicious.
Well, no, that is what it is.
Okay.
You know, I don't blame our state's problems on the federal government.
I mean, I got strong views as far as why we have the problems that we have.
Amen.
It's not the federal government and it's not the president.
So I don't like hearing them running.
Wait a minute.
Wait, just a second.
Wait just a second.
Part of your state's problem could, in fact, be laid at the feet of the federal government.
Okay.
And that's their attempt to run the auto industry with miles per gallon standards and all these other regulations that they have put on that industry.
I agree with that.
And also the healthcare mess that is out of control because the government is involved in it.
I know GM and Christopher, they made all kinds of bad decisions, but they're in the healthcare business.
They're not in the auto business anymore.
There's so much.
And a lot of this you can trace directly to the federal government.
In fact, I looked something up the other night.
I'm just going to remember this off the top of my head.
The first implementation of cafe standards, mileage standards, was in the 70s with Nixon during the contrived oil shortage days.
And that's when the federal government started mandating these cafe standards.
And at that time, I think we imported 35% of our oil.
Now, follow me on this.
First CAFE standards, 1970, 71, something like that, we imported 35% of our oil.
Since then, we've had two or three more incremental additions to cafe standards.
And yet, and mileage, by the way, the fleet mileage in America has go way up.
If you average all the cars manufactured here and all the cars sold on the highways, you'll find that the average mile per gallon is much greater than it was in the 1970s.
So CAFE standards have given us more cars and more opportunity for people to want to buy them that get greater miles per gallon than in the 1970s.
And yet, with the fleet, overall fleet miles per gallon going up, we now import 60% of our oil.
Now, is there a disconnect here?
The cafe standards were supposed to reduce the imports.
Cafe standards are supposed to save fuel.
They were supposed to get people more economical energy expenses, travel costs, greater miles per gallon.
And what happened?
Well, people did more driving.
And now we're going to repeat the mistake.
More cafe standards, more demands in the auto business that they produce cars with even greater miles per gallon, and people are going to be driving more because it's going to be cheaper at the pump, even though the pump price is going up.
It's only $2.80 in the last 40 years, by the way, but still, when you get more mileage, people drive more.
And so we're using more energy, guess what?
And so we need more imports.
So you might ask yourself a question.
Are these cafe standards actually counterproductive?
We keep doing the same thing.
And guess what?
We keep importing more oil.
We're telling ourselves, we're saving gas.
We're protecting the environment.
We're really being good citizens and stewards of the planet, Mr. Limbois.
And yet, we're importing twice as much oil today as we did when the first cafe standards were put into place.
What do you think of that?
I'm going to tell you what's next.
Once these cafe standards don't accomplish anything, once they don't achieve their goal, you know what's next?
They're going to have to limit the number of cars people can own and drive as they continue down this path.
They'll do anything but drill.
They'll do anything but refine.
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