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July 18, 2008 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:23
July 18, 2008, Friday, Hour #3
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One more hour left in the Rush Limbaugh world here for the work week ending this Friday, July 18th.
Mark Davis in for Rush, who will return on Monday.
Rush was in attendance yesterday in a place where I wish I could have been.
And I know that millions of you wish that you could have been too.
The funeral of Tony Snow.
A phrase that I shouldn't even be speaking.
There should be, we should not have the words, you know, Tim Russert's funeral.
We shouldn't be, what was he, 58?
Tony Snow, 53, Tony Snow's funeral.
We shouldn't even be talking about that.
Russert should be there hosting Meet the Press, being an equal opportunity tormentor all the way through this magnificent political year that he's been such a great part of.
Tony Snow should be there to be a shining light for upbeat conservatism in the media, behind a podium at the White House or just whatever.
He should be here.
And Tim should be here, but they're not.
Cancer has taken both of them from us, and I'm not happy about it.
And I know, you know, my faith tells me I'm not supposed to be so angry when God calls someone home, but I'm sorry.
I wasn't done with these guys yet.
And, you know, I'm sorry.
I'm human.
And I know it's when it's your time, it's your time or whatever faith tells you to believe.
But Sunday mornings just aren't the same.
The Brokaw thing ain't working, man.
It ain't working.
I know that was the feel-good choice.
I know that there was, you know, Tom is an iconic figure and was a good anchor and is a good guy.
And I love the Greatest Generation book and everything.
I love Brokaw.
But yikes, that's just not exciting viewing on Meet the Press.
And they got nowhere to go.
You know, this should not be something that's hosted by a reporter or an anchor.
It's not a reporter or anchor job.
So, you know, sorry, David Gregory.
Sorry, Andrea Mitchell.
It's the job of a host.
It's a hosting job.
Someone who is a compelling and entertaining questioner, ideally respected all up and down the ideological spectrum.
Sorry, Keith Olberman.
Sorry, Chris Matthews.
They got nobody.
Chuck Todd is such a good guy.
NBC's MSNBC's political director.
I don't know if he's got the chops to fill that chair.
Maybe.
I don't know.
But I'm going to be looking at Brokaw every Sunday through the inauguration.
I don't think so.
And now Tony Snow is gone.
And whether it was as the host of Fox News Sunday or behind the lectern at the White House, where his 17 months, his shining year and a half of White House press briefings, more than anything else, revealed Scott McClellan to be the useless schlub that history now reveals him to be.
But I will tell you that, and this is very, I don't know, not self-serving.
It is self-serving, but I don't mean it to be.
But it's kind of talk show host jingoism.
But let me share this with you.
There have been some very, very good White House spokespeople.
There have been some very, very good writers, and Tony certainly was that in Detroit and at the Washington Times.
And I mean, he just, everything he did, he did well.
But there are a lot of people who did the things that Tony did well, you can find, quite frankly, a lot of other people who do those things well.
Not this, not this.
Tony Snow was a talk show host and a damn good one.
And history is littered with failed attempts at talk radio by people who some executive thought would be good at this because they're interesting for some other reason.
You know, Whoopi Goldberg, Mario Cuomo, right?
And even some people who I politically admire have tried this, and I love them, and I'd sit around over a coffee with them for an hour and a half.
But that doesn't mean that I need to be listening to them for three hours on the radio.
It just doesn't work most of the time.
You have to have a certain, very special skill to do this.
And I think the existence of the Limbaugh show proves that that's the case.
I'm not sitting here telling you that I'm the greatest shakes in the world because I've got it.
I like to think I do, been at it for a quarter century, but it took a while to get good.
I mentioned WOKV in Jacksonville.
These bless their hearts were so desperate in 1982, they gave a 24-year-old news director a show.
And I'm guessing it probably wasn't very good for a while.
And then it got better, and that's lovely.
And so I'm here, and we're together on a Friday, and I'm filling in for Limbaugh, and all is right with the world.
But the reason I bring this up is that Tony Snow did this, and it was very special that he did this.
And the skills that he brought to this job, talk show host, were the skills that made him special in other walks of life.
He liked people, he was interested in everything.
He was curious and tolerant of people's views, yet assertive about his own, and always upbeat, and just a magnificent, magnificent man.
So, as when Russert died, it's not just the studios of Meet the Press that are poorer, or the White House press room in Tony's case, or a talk show studio, or the folks over at Fox News certainly had their flags at Half Staff.
It's not just broadcast venues or the halls of government power that are poorer, it is our entire country because the country needs more people like Tony Snow and Russert.
People who just love the business, they love the business of politics, but more than that, they love our country and they love their families and they love their Lord.
Now, this just happens to be the case in Tony and in Tim Russert.
They're very religious guys.
America is a country where you can be of any faith you like, and plenty of magnificent people are of other faiths than mine.
I don't necessarily share my Christianity, but I will tell you that Tony Snow and Tim Russert, as Christians, as religious people, it made them not only did it make them more special, and not just because I attach that.
Well, you're a Christian, you're more special.
Not at all.
I think tons of people of other religions are special, and some Christians I wouldn't give the time of day.
So it's not something that's umbilically connected there.
But carrying them through their lives, the Jesuit training that Russert got informed, I think it informed the job he did.
The Christian Foundation of Tony Snow.
If you go to Catholic University, Google Tony Snow Catholic University commencement and see what he told those kids at commencement a year ago.
You'll cry, I warn you, but do it anyway.
His faith buoyed him as he battled cancer.
Tim Russert fought no battle.
I mean, he just dropped there doing the promos on a Friday before Meet the Press.
They were very different deaths, Tony Snow and Tim Russert, but we are robbed just the same.
Robbed not just of broadcasters that we admired, guys we liked watching or listening to or whatever, or in Tony Snow's Tony's case in particular.
Well, and Russert in his past life, as a servant of some elected officials, they served their country in that regard, served democracy in that regard.
But we need people with that kind of outlook who just love the magical music of political discourse and who participate in it.
Russert, more of a facilitator.
He'd bring everybody in, give them the what-for, and then everybody would leave the Meet the Press stories, Meet the Press studios.
Tony Snow, though, lived the life.
He lived the life of a conservative warrior, but always a happy warrior.
Did you ever see a picture of Tony Snow when he wasn't smiling?
Even when his hair was thinned and his body ravaged by the cancer that took him from us?
Did you ever see Tony Snow when you didn't say, golly Moses, what a great guy?
And when he was hosting Fox News Sunday, and when he would have that last word, and the one he did after 9-11, and the one he did on the last Father's Day of his stewardship of Fox News, where he said that, you know, politics come and go, crises come and go.
But every day when I come home, I am called the one thing that just makes it worth going through another day, no matter what that day contains.
I am called dad.
God bless him.
God bless him.
So Rush was at that funeral yesterday, and I think a lot of us were with him in spirit.
Rush will be back with you on Monday, and I will be back with you after this brief pause.
Let's get back into some topicality, some stories from the week gone by.
I got some fresh material, and whatever you got to bring, bring it on.
It's Open Line Friday.
1-800-282-2882.
1-800-282-2882.
Mark Davis in for Rush Limbaugh, and we'll be right back on the EIB Network.
It is the Friday Rush Limbaugh Show, Friday, July 18th, 2008.
I'm Mark Davis.
Fill it in.
Rush is back on Monday.
All right.
You're hearing a lot of advertising, seeing a lot of advertising by T. Boone Pickens and the Pickens Plan.
The wonderful website, pickensplan.com is there for you.
We are the Saudi Arabia, he says, of wind.
Insert your own political joke here.
I'm going to share a couple of things from this because there are so many voices that are trying to get us to get on board with alternative energy.
Some of them deserve to be listened to and some of them don't.
If someone is trying to get us onto alternative energy sources, or to at least try them out because it's friendlier to the planet and it gets us a little bit off the oil teat where so much of our oil comes from parts of the world that want to kill us, okay, that's fine.
I'm totally willing to have free market forces and private sector entrepreneurs and inventors try to come up with ways to run our cars and heat our homes and run our power plants with other things.
That's great.
Some of those things will work.
Some of those things will not.
I mean, there really is a filtering process that a metaphoric filtering process.
If you've gotten 14 things in your email inbox, here's the car in India that runs on air.
Okay, good.
Let me give you a rule.
No matter what you get, no matter what you read, there's a man in Pawtucket, Rhode Island who has developed something where his car got 168 miles per gallon.
But the oil companies won't let anybody develop.
Oh, horse hockey.
Here is a rule that is as unshakable as gravity because it is almost as similarly a law of physics.
If someone invents something and millions of people want it and it actually works, it will be available tomorrow.
I mean, that's that's, I can't make it any simpler.
I mean, okay, maybe it won't be tomorrow.
Maybe it'll be a couple of weeks or a couple of months from now.
How fast did the hybrid cars drop from the sky?
And I will tell you, using my skepticism, which has served me very well over the years, I scoffed a little bit about the hybrid car.
I said, yeah, how many people are going to want these?
The answer is everyone does.
Of course, you know, when hybrids came out, gas was, you know, what, $2.89 a gallon.
So I am the first person.
That gives me a responsibility to be the first person to say, hey, hybrids, big props.
Way to go.
Way to go, Prius.
You know, way to go.
Now you got Hondas with Civics and Accords that are hybrid.
You got a hybrid Tahoe made of the Arlington, Texas GM plant that's about a mile behind the back of my head.
Hybrid Ford escapes, hybrid this, hybrid that.
It worked.
And not a dime of government money, not a dime of taxpayer money was needed to invent the hybrid or to get you to want one.
It all happened in the glorious landscape of the private sector.
So if people like T-Boone Pickens are talking about let's do some wind and some solar and use natural gas for other types of transportation, I think that's fantastic.
I think that's great.
But I don't want to spend a gazillion dollars of government money doing it.
You don't have to do it Al Gore's way.
If there is a future for wind power and solar power and natural gas, entrepreneurs and inventors and marketers will get it to us without a dime of what will be called, in a sinister twist of the language, investment.
So when Barack Obama gets up there and says we must invest in alternative fuels, no, no, you don't invest in alternative fuels.
Someone invents something that runs on them.
And if enough people want to buy it, they'll buy it.
It will either succeed or fail on its merit and not because some government initiative made you want it artificially or forced it on you artificially.
E.J. Deion of the Washington Post is a good guy.
He is absolutely decidedly liberal.
I've spoken with him a number of times, but he's not one of those liberals that make your teeth itch.
He's just a good guy.
But he has written a column called Gore's Bold Solutions that simply cries out to be shared.
And I will, as well as some of the Pickens plan, if you want to see what's actually in the T-Boon Pickens.
And it's kind of interesting.
He's a Texas and Oklahoma kind of guy.
And I've actually been around Mr. Pickens a couple of times.
Just a prince of a man.
He is one of those voices that does deserve to be listened to.
But even Mr. Pickens sometimes will talk in terms of that addiction to oil and all that.
No, no, no.
We just like oil.
I love fossil fuels.
I love the way they make my car go.
They are wonderful.
They're efficient.
They're expensive right now, but I'm willing to pay it.
You know, if it's eight bucks a gallon, we may need to talk, but whatever.
And I'm very blessed in life.
And I know, you know, not everybody is.
A lot of people are at that point where I'm done with my car.
The heck with that thing.
I'm parking it.
And the reduced use of gasoline is what's leading the price of oil to actually fall.
Look at that.
Market prices again.
But Mr. Pickens, his heart is at least in the right place.
Al Gore's is not.
He is trying to bankrupt the modern American economy and turn us into France, where the cars are little tiny things that get crushed like a pack of cigarettes.
Again, I just love that wonderful exercise that Rush turned us on to and others as well, where you get stretches of the Unibomber and stretches of Al Gore and say, hey, who wrote it?
And they're sometimes just flat out indistinguishable.
Anyway, E.J. Deion's column on Al Gore's quote-unquote bold solutions in just a moment.
But for right now, let's go to Winfield, Kansas.
And Sharon, hey, Mark Davis in for Rush Limbaugh.
How are you?
Hi, Mark.
Nice to talk to you again.
I used to be Sharon and Plano.
Oh, tremendous.
Whoa.
Well, we moved, didn't we?
Well, yeah, via Washington, D.C. for a few years.
And now, nice to talk to you.
Okay, when you were talking about Tony Snow in his capacity as press secretary, it made me wonder about the Texas reaction to Scott McClellan and his book and then his testimony and also his mother, Carol Keaton Rylander.
Also now known as Carol Keaton Strayhorn, former gubernatorial candidate, former state controller.
And the word was that mama doesn't like President Bush very much and that she got her son to share that distaste and got her son to become thoroughly traitorous in his treatment of it.
I don't really believe that.
I think Scott McClellan is a total boob, but I don't believe that he has arrived at his baseless positions without actually thinking about them.
In fact, it would be a rescue for him reputationally if I were to say that he was just a blade of grass waving in the breeze that is his mother.
But no, Scott's a big boy and a grown-up.
He's not taking orders from mama.
The reaction here in Texas to Scott McClellan was really no different than it was anywhere else when people recognized that Scott McClellan is an opportunist and changed his stripes like a, I mean, or changed his color like a chameleon.
The very book proposal that he had put in originally for this book was in no way something that was as critical as he later decided to become.
And so Scott McClellan is simply a laughingstock and deservedly so today.
And I'm just, I'm pleased about that.
Well, good.
That makes me very happy.
Well, I live to make you happy.
Thank you, Sharon.
Appreciate it very much.
All righty, we are coming up on the bottom of the hour here in just a second.
Let's give you a little bit of a preview of our final half hour.
1-800-282-2882-1-800-282-2882.
First up, I will have the E.J. Deion column for you called Gore's Bold Solutions, in which Mr. Deion, just as many on the left do, view Al Gore as this visionary, this oracle who needs to be followed when Al Gore is almost a metaphoric bearded hermit living in some crazy woods where a bold and thriving industrial economy is just something that,
and people driving what they want is just anathema to what he believes.
And also, we'll talk about Barack Obama, very upset about the so-called attacks on Michelle.
Well, I've got a perfect solution on how no one will say an unkind word about Michelle ever again.
If Barack Obama wants to go along with it, he can.
So all of that and more coming up.
Mark Davis in for Rush.
Be right back.
Home stretch half hour.
Loving life, filling in for Rush.
How good can it get?
Thank you all for hanging out.
Rush is back on Monday.
1-800-282-2882 is the number.
Okay, as promised, some of the words of Washington Post writer E.J. Deion, Gore's bold solutions.
On the issue of gasoline prices, Republicans think they have a winner in their call for new drilling, and Democrats are playing defense.
Democrats need, this is a technical term, a lot more oomph.
Al Gore wants to help them.
In a speech here on Thursday and in an interview, Gore played his usual role as unpaid party visionary by arguing that we can ease the climate crisis, the economic crisis, and the crisis of dependence on foreign energy all at once.
Quote, we're borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the planet, Gore said in his speech.
Every bit of that's got to change.
He urges a 10-year goal for getting 100% of our electricity from renewable sources and clean rather than carbon-based fuels.
It sounds like a typical idealistic Al Gore idea.
E.J.'s being kind.
It sounds like the kind of lunacy that we have come to expect from the former vice president.
But E.J. writes, two things about this proposal merit attention.
It points a country that uses too much energy down the right path, and Gore is showing that being environmentally responsible is economically sensible.
Well, E.J. and my brother, there is very little that is sensible in this proposal because its underpinnings are so crazy.
For example, just the very phraseology, we can ease the climate crisis.
Please define for me the crisis.
Are global temperatures on an upswing?
Well, it appears that they are.
But every change in global temperature, everyone, up or down, is going to have an upside for some and a downside for others.
Granted, the uptick in temperatures may not be great news for some polar bears.
Understand that.
And I don't say that flippantly.
I like polar bears.
However, if the global temperature goes up a degree in the next three decades, a couple of things will happen that are great for people.
Imagine the possibility of food production at latitudes hostile to it beforehand.
Imagine the ability to actually get to some oil that used to be beneath some ice caps.
Nothing wrong with that.
Oh, but getting to more oil.
No, That's not on the Al Gore index cards because finding more of the energy that built this great nation.
No, We need to find energy sources that are yet to be developed or used in other countries that don't have nearly our demands.
And we need to be turned into little copycats of those other countries.
Yeah, I love going to Europe.
Europe's very cool.
France in particular is a cool country.
There's more people who like us there than you'd want to know, or maybe than you do know.
You probably would want to know.
But if you're in Europe, or really almost any other part of the world, you blow on the cars and they topple over.
Now, if you, yes, if you do want to drive a car that has a curb weight roughly the same as your own, then absolutely, Al Gore is your man.
But if you actually would like to have a car that has some heft or actually has some performance or some speed, and it doesn't have to be a Hummer, it doesn't have to be a JAG, you know, anything, then you're going to need some fossil fuels.
And this, and it's a funny thing is if Al Gore were calling on the private sector to say, hey, let's do this.
I mean, let's be at a lot of everybody, and we're coming up on the 40th.
It's kind of funny.
39 years ago, right now, 39 years ago, right now, Apollo 11 was on the way to the moon.
The actual Neil Armstrong footprint anniversary will be on Sunday, July 20th.
But two days ago was the 40th, 39th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 11.
One year from now, it'll be the 40th anniversary of all of that, and there'll be all kinds of invocations.
Well, just as we showed the determination to put man on the moon, we need that kind of determination to get America off of oil, blah, blah, blah.
Now, there's a difference.
Only government could put man on the moon, at least in 1969.
That was something, and President Kennedy, God bless him, May 1961, right?
I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving before this decade is out, achieving the goal before this decade is out of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.
Two and a half years later, JFK was dead.
Eight years later, his dream realized and ours and the world's dream with it, human footprints on the moon.
Only government could do that.
Only NASA could do that.
Right now, what is needed is a NASA-style determination.
But in the private sector, let's invent some cars that run on some different things.
Let's invent other ways, other technologies.
Let's do those things.
Because if they can be done and done well, they will be invented and they will serve us well.
But that is not what Al Gore's preaching.
That's not what his plan is.
It is to have government ram these things down our collective gullet because it must be this way for him to be happy and for those who share his industry-hating zealotry.
E.J. Deion writes about it, though, as if he is just the Pied Piper of wisdom on this.
Democrats should be concerned about where they are on the gas price issue right now, and the party's own strategists are worried that its response is inadequate.
What the Democrats have been saying about the Bush administration's energy record is certainly true.
The money taxpayers threw at the oil and gas industry and Vice President Cheney's energy plan did nothing to help consumers at the pump.
And promises that more offshore drilling will magically bring down prices are not backed up by the evidence.
What?
It doesn't magically bring down prices.
It just does.
When you have more of something, it costs less.
Promises that more offshore drilling will magically bring down prices, Mr. Deion.
The mere likelihood of more oil production, just having oil production sort of hanging in the breeze brought oil prices down this very week.
The president talked drilling, oil goes down six bucks the same afternoon.
Those are not coincidental.
In his speech, E.J. Deion writes, Gore uttered the disturbing truth that the exploding demand for oil, especially in places like China, is overwhelming the rate of new discoveries by so much that oil prices are almost certain to continue upward over time, no matter what the oil companies promise.
Wrong.
Once again, people playing fast and loose with the word truth.
We do have enough oil to keep prices at a manageable level.
The world does.
We'll probably be able to get some of it at our polar regions if the Earth's temperature will go up another degree or two.
And therein lies the incredible narcissism of referring to a planet in trouble or a climate in crisis.
That suggests that we know, that we, measly man, know what God know better than God, what the temperature of the planet should be.
There is, of course, no evidence whatsoever, none, that man is causing global warming.
Well, let's put it this way.
There's no proof.
I mean, evidence you can use selectively.
You could use the normal confusion between correlation and causation.
Post hoc ergo propterhawk.
I think I told you that last time we were together.
Just because B follows A doesn't mean that B was caused by A. Human productivity, rising temperatures.
Well, human productivity must have caused it.
No, not necessarily.
But the notion that the climate is in crisis means that we consider this to be a perfect global temperature.
Guess what?
Maybe it's not.
The temperature could go up a tick or two.
No, you're not going to get any more tornadoes or sandstorms or asteroids.
Love Schwarzenegger the other day.
Oh, these forest fires, it must be global warming because we've never had so many.
You know, I never thought Arnold was a stupid man.
I really didn't.
And I don't really think so now.
I think he's subject to the same phenomenon that's happened to a lot of people, Al Gore included, that this kind of fetish for man-made global warming just sucks the IQ right out of your head, makes you believe ridiculous things.
Guess what, governor?
Sometimes records are broken.
Temperature records, hurricane records, forest fire records.
Having things happen that are beyond the norm are, well, normal.
Oh, boy.
Anyway, so as Al Gore blathers this past week, it's going to create just some more talk on this subject.
And I thought I would share a couple of things with you there.
1-800-282-2882-1-800-282-2882.
Gentleman wants to get on the horn with us and talk about the United States and Iran.
Has there been a shift in policy by the United States toward Iran now that it seems we will have some type of diplomatic contact?
We'll talk about it next.
Anything else you might want to?
We've got another 17 minutes.
Let's make the most of them.
Mark Davis filling in for Rush on the EIB network.
Mark Davis filling in for Rush, Limbaugh.
Just a few more minutes, another segment or two, and we are glad that you are here.
Rush will be back on Monday.
Let's head to Tulsa.
Grant, Mark Davis in for Rush on this Friday.
It's a pleasure to have you.
How you doing?
Hey, it's pretty good to talk to you again.
I talk to you on your local show sometimes.
Cool.
Thanks.
I just wondered, I don't have anything other to do in my big truck all day long except drive around and listen to you guys.
I was just wondering why after you guys beat up on Barack Obama every day about his statement about that he was going to meet with the Iranians and stuff without preconditions, which, by the way, he hasn't done.
He hasn't met with anybody except for the Canadians, if you know what I'm saying.
Well, it's not his position to meet with anyone yet, but he'll have some meetings on his rock and roll around the world tour, though.
That'll be interesting.
Right.
But our envoy is meeting with high-ranking State Department envoys meeting with the Iranians as we speak.
Well, which is it?
It's a thoroughly valid question.
Condi Rice says this is not a change in policy.
Is it or is it not?
I like and respect Secretary Rice, but I also like and respect John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador and very much the hardliner on this, kind of a policy hawk, who says that this is a U-turn.
He said the other day that to the Iranians, this sends the sign of the political weakness of an administration in its last days, desperate for a deal.
So let's break it down.
Which one is it?
If you sit down and talk to someone, is that instantly negotiation?
That answer is no.
And Secretary Rice says there will not be negotiations.
We're just kind of opening a door, covering a base or two.
It's a one-time thing, and we're out of there.
Okay, let me give it back to you with the following conclusion that I'm drawing from all of this.
They're essentially twofold.
Number one, let's see if this yields anything, because this is kind of the door we propped open with Korea, and it kind of brought Korea around.
However, Ahmadinejad is, I think, four times crazier than Kim Jong-il.
We're not, nobody's meeting with Ahmadinejad.
And the other thing that's a possibility is that after Israel had a little bit of a war game thing that looked very much like an attack on Iranian facilities, maybe the phone rang at the State Department.
It was somebody in Iran saying, look, if you want to send somebody over, we're ready to start talking about doing some things to dismantle some nukes.
Don't tell anybody, but we're willing to do it.
So the strong possibility exists that neither you nor I know everything that's been going on behind the scenes.
I think that the Iranians are a lot more dangerous than the North Koreans are, although the North Koreans have already set off a nuclear warhead.
Well, so what do you think somebody ought to be sitting around thinking right now?
Is it a good idea?
Is it a good development or a bad development that an Undersecretary of State, William Burns, will be over there to have at least what is described as a conversation, not a negotiation.
Good thing, bad thing?
Probably a good thing to meet with them, and let me say why, because I think that if I had an enemy, I'd sure want to know what their intentions were so I could think about what my correct response is going to be.
There is the old adage of, you know, keep your friends closer, keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
I think there's wisdom in that.
It does kind of depend.
And they're also, as we've learned, various degrees of contact.
Having Under Secretary of State William Burns go talk to his counterpart or whatever in Iran, you know, to have him do that, it falls far, far short of having Ahmadinejad over to the White House.
I mean, that ain't going to happen, and that should not happen until and unless there are serious concessions by Iran.
But short of that, you know, there's dallying around the fringe that can be done.
And so what I'm going to do is I'm not going to sit here and say that I know that it's great.
I'm not going to go John Bolton on you and tell you that I know that it sninks.
Let's see if it yields anything.
Let's see if it bears any fruit.
And if it does, then we can look back and say that it was a good thing.
Appreciate you.
1-800-282-2882-1-800-282-2882.
Tell you what, let's do.
Let's actually get the break in 30 whole seconds early.
Come back and probably have room for a call on the other side as we fold up the tent for the Rush Limbaugh Show for this week.
I'm Mark Davis in for Rush, who will return to you on Monday.
And this is the EIB Network.
Rush Limbaugh Show.
One more segment.
Let's see what we can craft from it, shall we?
Mark Davis in for Rush.
Let's head to the credit card capital of the world, biggest city in Delaware, Wilmington.
Bill, Mark Davis, in for Rush, how are you?
Hi, Mark.
I think I can end your show on a happy note.
Oil's down again today.
You are absolutely spot on when you say this talk of opening up more acreage to drilling in the U.S. is having an effect.
I've followed the industry on a major Wall Street firm for years and when I worked in New York, and it'll absolutely have an effect.
Just one comment.
I was on the phone with the people, the biggest oil service company today, Schlumberger, and they say activity is starting to pick up in the U.S.
The reason why we want to drill offshore is the big oil companies, they don't want to look for, there are two types of oil companies.
They're the major oil companies, which is the ExxonMobils of the world, and then they're what they call independents, which are the smaller guys.
Up until recently, the independents are the drillers in the U.S. onshore.
The majors can only make money offshore because these big rigs cost $450,000 a day to rent.
They need to open up offshore drilling to the major oil companies would love to drill in the U.S.
It's far, far more profitable to give you an idea, give your listeners an idea.
In the North Sea, and I've been over there many times on those rigs, there's something called a PRT, Petroleum Resource Tax.
Got about 30 seconds.
I just want you to know.
Go ahead.
Okay, they take 90% of what you produce is taxed.
So the oil companies, if anybody tells you any differently, they're not telling you the truth.
The oil companies would love to drill in the U.S. because of the safety of the drilling, obviously, with Venezuela and countries like that.
Sure, but it's also extremely stable places.
Let me say, finally, you and Rush have done a superb job on getting the message out.
We can bring this oil in a lot faster than the 10 years.
God bless you.
I know we can.
And, Bill, you did what you advertised to do.
You put a spring in our step.
Thank you.
Thanks to Kit Carson, Ed Robinson, for taking care of me.
I'm Mark Davis, filling in for Rush.
Hope to do it again soon.
God bless you, Rush.
We'll look for you on Monday.
God bless Tony Stone and his family.
God bless our country and our troops.
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