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July 29, 2008 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:48
July 29, 2008, Tuesday, Hour #2
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Well, the Justice Department has announced the indictment of Ted Stevens, the longest serving Republican senator.
I'm not yet sure just what the indictment is about.
I've seen different two different things.
They're being indicted for shady deals with lobbyists.
You remember they raided his house.
And then another report says that he's going to be indicted for false statements, which is like the Martha Stewart indictment.
And they've got a press conference coming up at 1.20 this afternoon.
Explain the indictment of Ted Stevens, longest serving Republican in the Senate.
Have you heard the latest about Steve Fawcett?
The balloonist, this adventurer.
He went up in this experimental airplane and went down and they searched him, searched all his time.
They think now he faked it.
They think Steve Fawcett faked it.
Fawcett's a friend of Richard Branson, the Virgin Airlines and music and everything else entrepreneur.
First man to fly nonstop around the earth in a hot air balloon, went missing last September when his final flight in a light plane over the Nevada Desert went missing.
Lieutenant Colonel Cynthia Ryan, U.S. Civil Air Patrol, has said Fawcett, whose body or plane was never found could still be alive.
I've been doing this search and rescue for 14 years.
Faucet could have been found, should have been found, but they haven't found any wreckage.
They haven't found one morsel from the airplane in which he was traveling.
It's not like we didn't have our eyes open.
We found six other planes while we were looking for him.
We were pretty good at uh what we do.
Well, wait a minute.
If they found six other planes while looking for him, how long have those six other planes been out there?
You mean they might have missed those six other planes.
They weren't looking for those, so I guess they couldn't, couldn't say they missed them.
But anyway, the the the rumor is, uh, ladies and gentlemen, that uh he's is purposely skipped out on a bunch of uh debts and and and affairs deals and stuff that uh that were cramping his style.
Uh and that he may his wife out there thinking he's dead and so forth, but he may have faked this whole thing just to escape a lot of pressures that uh have been placed on him.
By the way, welcome to Sir Rush Limbaugh program, the Excellence in Broadcasting Network, our 20th anniversary week celebration underway, twenty years on the network, celebrated this Friday, August the 8th.
Let me check real quickly here the uh crude oil price, see what it is now.
It's been down as low as 120 dollars a barrel today.
It is continuing to slide, and a lot of people say, okay, what's making this happen?
Now see that it's interesting that to follow this.
You know, the thigh bones connected to the tailbone or whatever the supply and demand.
It works.
Now the the Democrats in the drive-by's of course need a villain when they're the oil price and the gasoline price go up, and they usually attack big oil, but of late they've been going after the speculators.
Well, now all of a sudden the speculators, I mean, somebody, I mean, they're they're selling, and it's uh from a high of one forty-five down to one twenty-one.
Now, what has happened?
What's happened?
By the way, I I remind you, and I ted these, these high prices cannot be supported for very long by the market.
I mean they have not stopped speculating sturdily.
They're speculating the price is gonna go down now, not up.
They haven't stopped speculating.
There's a lot of all kinds of speculating going on out there.
They haven't stopped speculating, there's now speculating the price is gonna go down.
Why?
What's causing this to happen?
Well, there are a whole bunch of factors.
There's more supply on the market, people are driving less, people are flying less.
There's far more supply out there.
We don't have any kind of a supply problem.
So supply and demand, it it makes sense.
Gasoline prices are falling a little bit too.
But you've had you've had two things out there.
You've had President Bush with a press conference canceling his dad's executive order that prohibited offshore drilling.
That caused, I think, a huge impact on the speculation market, even though it was not followed by any substantive action from Congress.
Then, yesterday, Harry Reed caved on some drilling aspects of legislation.
Because the Democrats are getting heat about this.
The Democrats are running scared.
They have not wanted near Pelosi nor Reed have wanted any votes on drilling on any legislation in the House or Senate, because they know a lot of their members would cave and vote with the Republicans on this.
This still is.
I don't care if oil is down from 145 to 121.
I don't care if gasoline's down from 405 to 398, whatever it is.
This is still the salient issue with the American people.
Economics, gasoline.
They are still driving less, and they don't want to drive less.
They don't like the impact that these prices are making.
And so anybody standing in the way of something easily understandable.
More supply, less uh less cost.
Anybody standing in the way is going to take heat.
So Harry Reid and Jeff Bingaman, or Bingham, I should say, is the uh the uh the uh energy and natural resources committee chairman of Senate have put together a bill that would open nearly a billion new acres off the coast of Alaska for study as well as accelerating Gulf of Mexico leases.
The legislation drafted by Dingy Harry and Jeff Bingaman, Democrat in New Mexico, would open nearly a billion new acres off the coast of Alaska to study it for drilling.
It would also dramatically accelerate oil leases in the western and central Gulf of Mexico.
The Lout, Senator Frank Lautenberg, Democrat, New Jersey.
I am unalterably opposed to drilling.
He's a member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, cited a massive oil spill that closed nearly 100 miles of the Mississippi River last week.
It happened it was not an oil, it was it was not a uh uh it happened on the river.
It did not happen in the Gulf, and it was not an oil derrick or a platform or a well that sprung the leak.
Senator Maria Cantwell, uh Democrat Washington, urged Reed to be very careful about drilling off the coast of Alaska.
Reed could also face resistance from the Democrats who oppose drilling off Alaska's shores.
Now, the Democrats are sticking out their chins, begging to be walloped on this issue.
This is this is Rick Moran writing in the American thinker, but I'm telling you, we've we've trying here to emphasize to the Republicans what a fabulous dynamic issue they have here against the Democrats and Obama, not just the presidential race, but in House and Senate races as well.
There's no question the Democrats want you to suffer.
There's no question they want these prices remaining high.
They want you angry, they want you angry at Bush, the incumbent Republicans.
They want you fit to be tied, and you should be at them.
So when Harry Reed announces that he's gonna open, he's gonna agree to open nearly a billion new acres off the coast of Alaska to study for drilling and uh accelerate oil leases in the Gulf of Mexico.
Bam, another three bucks came off the barrel price of oil.
So the whole concept here of drill, drill, drill, drill here, drill now, drill fast, is paying off.
In fact, let's uh audio soundbite.
Let me find the audio sound bit here.
Backing all of this up, it looks like number 18.
Find audio sound bit number 18.
This is this morning on the Fox News Channel's Fox and Friends, a portion of an exchange between the co-host Steve Ducey and the Weekly Standards Bill Crystal about the price of oil.
I was listening to uh Rush Limbaugh the other day driving in, and I heard him talk about how the Republicans have got a gift of sorts right now, and that is the fact that they've got a really good issue that they can beat up the Democrats with, and that is oil.
I agree.
I was on a panel with a Democrat the other day, and he told me privately that uh the one issue there the Democrats polling shows is really breaking through energy and drilling.
Americans just don't understand why the Democrats are preventing what looks like environmentally safe drilling in places where there could be oil and places where oil could be extracted from, like the oil shale in Colorado and elsewhere, uh, when we're short of energy and when we're paying four dollars a gallon.
So I think it's an awfully good issue for the Republicans.
Amen, bro.
It is a huge issue for the Republicans.
It's just going to take a little assertiveness, uh going on offense, but it's made to order and is evidenced by Harry Reed Caving on the uh issues that he did yet.
And he had to do that in order to keep some Democrats in his fold, should this ever come to a vote.
We'll be back.
Stay with us.
Hey Rush, it's your friend Sean Hannity, and I just want to say congratulations on twenty years of hosting excellence and broadcasting.
Now I know you love golf rush.
You are the tiger woods of our industry, and I know many of us we owe you a debt of gratitude for paving the way for all of us.
Thanks for all you do.
We love the program.
Here's to another great twenty years.
Well, thank you very much, Sean.
He was right about something.
We are we are very good friends.
And uh now in the same stable uh, so to speak.
But uh yeah, we are celebrating our our our twentieth uh anniversary here.
I these these you all know how I don't like birthdays.
I start I'm starting to quake in my boots like I know we're gonna play these things in the first break of the first hour.
And I just it's just to see a simple thank you seems so insufficient here.
What do you guys I'm sure they're getting snarky comments in there, I can see their facial expressions.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, I know.
That's why I said Dawn to just wait until Friday.
I mean you know, we're we're just we're just the waiting pool here today.
We're yeah, it'll start intensifying tomorrow and then reach the crescendo on Friday.
We are back eight hundred two eight two two eight eight two.
If you'd like to be on the program, this is Don in Lake Ronconcama in New York.
Nice to have you with us.
Hey, mega twentieth anniversary did us rush.
Thank you.
You know, you're here at the 20th and 21st century equivalent to a foul founding father Thomas Payne.
Wow, thank you, sir.
I uh I appreciate that.
Well, you you're always dishing out conservative and moral common sense on a daily basis.
And like Thomas Payne, you have ignite a nation through your ideas and opinions.
Thank you.
Uh you're welcome, sir.
Thank you again.
You know, if Barack Obama had spent the last twenty years listening to you instead of Jeremiah Wright, and in so doing embrace sounded conservatism, this would be a far more interesting political hand.
That's an excellent, excellent point.
And it illustrates again that his associations do indeed matter.
Yep.
Rush, besides your accomplishment of growing and holding the largest talk radio audience ever.
Yes.
And as well as maintaining a loyal staff.
Yes.
What have been in the last twenty years stands out as your most successful or gratifying to you?
I'd love to know.
There's been so many over the years that I've uh I've been captivated.
I've been a twenty-year listener.
Well, now, you th you say there have been so many.
You know, when I get questions like this, I uh a brain freeze sets in, and I can't remember all of the things that may have happened.
Can I help you?
You give me some things on your mind, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
The Barbara Shoner charity.
Remember the woman that was killed by the cougar.
Oh, yes.
Yes, your leukemia charity event, your rush on Broadway event for a Katrina victims.
The Anne Spake sale, the optimism surrounding your determination to overcome your deafness, the Clinton years and impeachment, the two thousand uh election fiasco, the nine-eleven attacks in the aftermath.
And uh what now wait wait wait a minute.
You you said you said uh uh the most uh uh Well getting us through it.
Oh, I thought you said I well, I misunderstood then.
I thought what what was the most gratifying thing that I thought you'd asked that it happened in the last twenty years.
And all those, I mean, all those are are um they're very extremely uh gratifying.
That's all I could think of off the top.
Well, uh no one else too rush if I you are the still the king of the uh eBay auctions.
With that Schmier Lenny No, not I've been edged out by a hundred thousand dollars.
I don't think so, because uh I had to disagree, Rush, because you went into that auction knowing that you were going to match it.
Well, true.
I did match it, and so the total amount raised was more was d was double what what lunch with Warren Buffett got, yes.
But the amount that was actually pledged was a hundred thousand dollars more for Buffett.
EBay made a big deal out of everybody knowing that.
Yeah.
They had to.
Uh well, I w was uh What I was going to say when I when I misunderstood uh your question.
What I was going to say what and there it's really hard to pick one or two things here.
I know.
It's e it's harder even to remember uh all of the all the things.
Yeah.
Uh I'd been I'd been what took me so long to get on a sus uh success track in uh in this business.
I had it wasn't I'd started radio in 1967.
It wasn't until 1984 that I started to experience any kind of success.
So the the the whole the whole ride here has been.
Well, the friendships that you have made that you've done.
Yeah, but none and none of that should be discarded, but I'll tell you it one th th I think early on that the thing that probably solidified it for me was when my first and second books came out.
Those books both sold two and a half million copies hardcover, and the second one did that in eight weeks.
Yep.
So it was actually on the New York Times bestseller list far less than the first one was.
It was on for a year.
Yep.
Because it just kept going.
And the reason it's one thing to turn on the radio and listen, and that's but it's another thing to go to a bookstore uh and actually engage in the physical act of buying a book.
And that's you know, those those two things were they were th that they were profound.
I had no such expectation.
I have uh both of your books uh photographed by you, Rush.
Uh well, you do.
Well, congratulations.
Uh I I thank you too.
But I I I uh th when those when those events happened, you know, that's sort of being slapped upside the head and say, hey, this is real, and it's got some staying power.
And it was the first I remember the first book party.
First party for the the party for the first book, and it was at twenty-one.
And I was so woefully unprepared for all of this.
I mean, I just was so naive, which is nothing wrong with it.
You have to live through things to learn them.
But I mean, I had invaded, again, the literary crowd, the publishing business.
And there were people that were not happy about this.
There were some bookstore owners that weren't happy about it.
There was a bookstore you people remember that tried to buy them.
You had to go to the fiction section, you had to go to the cooking section, they'd put them upside down, they would they would uh and even in New York outside Coliseum Books near uh Seventh Avenue, they had people standing guard.
If you went in and tried to buy my book, they would try to intimidate you from doing so.
There were feminist-oriented bookshops in California that would not stock it.
And yet it just sold through the roof, and the second one did too.
I mean, and if you combine the hardcover and the paperback, uh over nine million copies of those two books are in print.
So this book party that uh was it was it twenty-one, and I remember don't remember the gentleman's name, you remember his face.
I think he was with uh at the time Time magazine, Time Warner, some executive there.
And he uh came up to me and says, How how do how do you feel about this?
How do you how do you feel about this many of your books being sold?
And I said, you know, I'm kind of humbled by it.
And he just could not understand.
He's humbled.
You are humbled by it.
Why nobody can believe this, and you're humble.
I said, yes, I'm humble, but what do you could not understand that I what I was trying to say was that uh what I just told you.
It's one thing to turn on the radio and listen to it to go out, two and a half million people go out and buy a book when the only books that sold in those quantities were fiction books by people like Grisham and Tom Clancy.
Yeah, I was I was humble, but he did not understand the uh the the emotion that I had about this.
And I I remember a lot of other people, I mean the the book party was very nice, and it was it was it was fun.
But you could just tell that most of the people there just could not believe this.
They they were not they were not standing it.
They were a little bit excited because of what it might mean for the uh for the for the nonfiction publishing business.
But even uh even at that, it was just it was a it was a strange experience.
The second book party was out in Los Angeles, and that one that was that was really odd.
I mean, I I had I had to leave my own book party early because there were so many people showed up that I had no clue were gonna be there, that I had no one I didn't invite them, I didn't know who they were.
It was just an autograph photo session, and I just I got I got swamped and swarmed, and I had it out and I went to Chasons and had an adult beverage.
Hello, Rush.
This is Camille Paglia, a staunch supporter of Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi.
Many congratulations on your amazing career as a political analyst and ace broadcaster.
You single-handedly saved and revolutionized AM Radio.
Zowie.
Camille Paglia, she is in the tank for Obama.
She I read her stuff religiously.
She does like Pelosi.
She does she does like uh she likes Obama and uh in likes me too.
Likes me too.
In fact, I tell you a funny story about Camille Paglia.
Shortly after a profile of me by 60 Minutes, I guess a couple years after that, they had a uh an anniversary of their own bash at a temple of Dendar at the uh museum on Fifth Avenue.
And they invited me to attend.
And by this time, folks, I was up to speed.
So I was suspicious of this.
I mean, 60 minutes had profiled a lot of people, and they wanted me there.
And when they when they you know, they had all their former hosts that are no longer work there, plus their current hosts go up and make little speeches, and they showed highlights and clips of 60 minutes from previous episodes, and they showed nothing from mine, which didn't surprise me.
So I said, I and I I took a guest, I took the editor of my two books, Judith Regan, and when we got we finished the presentation that they did in their highlight reel, they went then went into dinner, which had been catered in the temple of Dendar.
And they had seated me at Camille Paglia's table.
Because Camille is a famous lesbian and a famous liberal.
And these guys at 60 minutes thought that there was gonna be fireworks because of their preconceived notions of me.
And Steve Croft, who had done the profile of me, kept circling my table all during dinner.
And Andy Rooney kept, you know, looking over now and then.
And I finally figured out what it was going on.
These people were expecting this table to be thrown upside down by me, expecting me to storm out of there or get into some big fight with Camille Paglia.
When Camille Paglia saw me, she demanded I come sit next to her for a while.
And so we started talking about the First Amendment and free speech, and our table probably had more fun than anybody else that night at the 60 Minutes Anniversary Party at the Temple of Dendar.
And craft Croft kept walking around looking for the fireworks to break out.
And I've stayed in touch with Camille Paglia ever since.
And she's uh uh she said her little joke.
She listens to the program occasionally.
She teaches at Philadelphia, the University of the Arts.
And I remember there was um I I better recheck my memory to get this.
I don't have to get it half right.
But I think her partner was doing uh can't remember what it was.
But it involved Clinton and sex.
And I advised Camille, do it.
Put that display on, put put that on display wherever you're gonna do, down in the village or someplace.
And she uh she heard about Yeah, I gave her a cigar.
Gave her a cigar.
Yeah, she's cool.
She's uh and she's very smart.
She's uh very fast and and a delight to uh to chat with.
But I'll never forget all these sixty minutes people expecting fireworks at the Temple of Dendor during their anniversary bash at the museum.
Eileen, uh in uh in Wales, South Wales, New York.
Nice to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hi, Rush.
Congratulations.
Thank you.
I hope you have twenty more.
I waited for you for thirty years.
I voted for Vertical Waterstart and how old I am.
Um I was uh watching MSNBC last night, which I don't do too often, and Obama was being interviewed um by someone about um why he didn't go visit the soldiers.
Yes.
And I re and he said um he started to fumble around and gave the same answers, and then he his voice kind of lowered, and he said, I did go to Walter Reed uh recently and I visited, but I didn't say anything to anybody, and then I remembered that you had said a couple days ago that it would be nice if he had visited them and hadn't said anything about it, and I thought, yeah, well, you've said something about it now.
This is this is an ongoing controversy that's that is surrounding Obama, and that is his bailing out of two troop visits while in Germany to instead work out.
But he but he picked right up on what you suggested.
Well, they all listen.
You know, they they they they will never admit it, but they all monitor.
They got somebody out there monitoring to see what's said here.
And if I come up with a good idea, they'll use it, like using the homeless in Denver, rather than try to sweep them off the streets.
But this business with the soldiers.
Now, this this this to me is is interesting because as is the case with every Obama quote unquote controversy.
This thing has more tentacles to it.
And trying to understand it and get your arms around it is next to impossible because so many people say so many different things.
And the original aspect gets obscured.
Now, the original thing, the point about which everybody is arguing is the original report.
Obama was slated to go see some tr some sick soldiers, recovering soldiers at two hospitals in Germany and bailed out.
He didn't go, as the original report said, because he chose to work out.
Then they say, Why?
Well, we didn't want to the Obama campaign, we didn't, we didn't we didn't want to make this a political event.
That'd have been bad form.
And the Pentagon got involved.
And they said, Well, he can't bring certain people with him because if he does, then if he brings campaign people, even military people that are retired that are serving in advisory roles, and that would be a campaign event.
We can't have that because the military can't show preference.
And then somebody said, Well, there and you can't bring the media, there won't be any pictures.
Then people say, aha, that's why I didn't go, because there's no photo up here, and so there's no value in it.
Now, I suspect, and now the the campaign's denying that, the Pentagon's saying one thing, the Obama campaign is saying another.
The whole thing's gotten so cloudy and murky that people have forgotten what the first thing is.
The first the the only thing you need to remember is that he had scheduled two troop visits, and you figure hospital visits, and you figure this has been squared up with the Pentagon.
The military was running this trip, and then all of a sudden he doesn't go.
He canceled the trips.
Now that's all you need to know.
Everything after that is simply CYA.
He didn't go.
There were ways he could have gone.
He could have gone with nobody knowing, and he could have said so later.
And he could have said so in a flowering speech.
He could have used it in a in a very up even-handed way.
He didn't need to come out of there and make a press conference a minute as he walked out.
He didn't he could have talked about he was on a fact-finding trip, right?
This is all about fact-finding.
Okay, so go visit these two hospitals.
Take a limited number of people in there with you, walk out, go back to your next appointment, fly on to uh London, Germany, France, wherever.
And at some point later on down the road, You explain what you did.
But he didn't.
And so the excuses have mounted.
And with everything that happens with Obama, we get an excuse.
We get an excuse for Jeremiah Wright.
We get an excuse for Bill Ayers.
We get an excuse for his misstatements about timetables in Iraq.
We get an excuse after excuse after excuse for the things this guy says that are inconsistent, for the behavior that is inconsistent, for the things that make no sense.
And like this this prayer that was ostensibly stolen by a Yeshiva student in uh in in Israel, when in fact there can be no doubt.
This is a Democrat Party political campaign.
Could be no doubt that the intention of that prayer was to be made public by Hooker by Crook somehow, some way.
And it eventually was.
So mission accomplished.
Everything that follows that is just a bunch of noise.
Fact is people saw the prayer.
And the reason they want the prayer out there is to do battle with the notion that exists somewhere in the blog's blogosphere that he's a Muslim.
There's it's a surprising high number of people think that.
So they want to battle that.
So everything, everything here is is stagecraft.
And when the stagecraft couldn't be pulled off as they originally wanted it by visiting the sick troops, then pull out of there.
Just don't go.
And understand that you're going to have your way with the drive-by media covering for you, fulminating over your explanation and amplifying it and putting it out there.
And a Republican's going to be left appearing like a bunch of Chihuahuas, yapping at his ankles, when he's going to be given the moral high ground of not wanting to politicize a trip to sick, recovering wounded soldiers.
Well, the fact is he bailed.
Because there was nothing in it for him.
Even though there was.
He could have used whatever he had gleaned in a very classy way in a future speech at his convention or what have you.
And he could have made new news.
He could have snuck in there.
Even he could have gone in there with without cameras.
You know they've got body watch people on him in the media.
They would have seen him gone in there.
It would have been even better if he'd have gone in there without a camera crew, without anybody documenting it, stay in there for whatever length time come out.
What'd you do in there?
I saw some sick troops, I saw some wounded.
Can you imagine a drive-by is putting that story out?
It was a totally blown opportunity.
This is and this comes from the arrogance and the condescension that exists, I think, primarily as uh general attitudes that uh leftists have, particularly those with egos, the size of Obama.
So he's on MSNBC last night, and he happened to let the cat out of the bag that well, I've been to Walter Reed.
Been to Walter Reed.
See, somebody some they don't do everything right in this campaign, and everybody thinks that this is a well-oiled machine that makes no mistakes, and that everything that happens is the result of a brilliantly conceived and flawlessly executed plan, and it is not.
Brief time out back after this.
Your guiding light.
Rush Limbaugh with talent on loan from a god.
One thing about Obama and the troops, you know, earlier on in this uh in this little photo up tour that he had, by the way, this was this was not a resume enhancing trip.
You people have to understand this.
There was this was photo op, photo op, photo up, photo up, that's all this was about.
And when there was no chance for a photo op with a troops, don't go see the troops.
Because Obama was with the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
He was playing basketball with them.
Remember that?
He got off to play and walk in a tarmac with them.
Uh-huh.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, well, here's the thing about that.
They remember Andrea Mitchell, NBC News, Washington, complaining.
That all those pictures were provided by the military.
And the military was doing all the interviews in Iraq and Afghan Afghanistan.
And it was, it was fake journalism, she said, fake interviews.
And so it was managed.
So we don't know how much it was genuine, how much it was put up, the military managing this thing, the military wants to stay out of politics.
You know, it could well be a ladies and gentlemen, and look at this is when Obama creates this kind of vacuum on a story like this and tries to obfuscape and confuse the answer, then it automatically leads to speculation by informed intelligent people like you and me.
Maybe, just to throw out a possibility here, maybe Obama, the most merciful Messiah, Lord Barack Obama chose not to go to the hospital, the two hospitals in Germany, because didn't want to run the risk that the troops don't like him.
I mean, the troops are not idiots.
These people they've been wounded.
They they watch the news.
They know the Democrat Party has invested in defeat.
They know that Obama is still invested in defeat.
They know that Obama, the Democrats, if they can will still secure defeat in Iraq.
If they can hang it, it's Bush's war.
Bush's war.
I've been to Afghanistan.
I know they watched the news.
They're not ignorant of what is happening.
They remember Harry Reed waving a white flag.
This war is lost.
They remember Harry Reed.
They remember Pelosi.
They remember Mertha.
And they've got, and they've got, don't forget Obama, who's out there saying before he gets to Germany, that the troops really didn't even do all that much to bring about the success of the surge.
So it's possible.
It's possible that the troops really didn't.
He was afraid.
Not that they wouldn't see him.
Maybe he's afraid he would get less than a welcomed treatment.
Never know.
Here is uh Woody, Woody calling from Fort Myers, Florida.
Woody, nice to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Uh Ditto's from Florida, Rush.
And it's an honor to talk to you.
Thank you very much, sir.
I'll make it short.
Uh Rush.
The price of fuel when it was steadily climbing up and up and up.
My business requires me to fill my vehicles up every day.
It was killing me every day.
It would go up with the price of oil.
And now I believe you said that oil is down to uh 121 this morning.
And I believe the high was 160.
That translates, I believe, into 25%.
But yet it takes a while for that to drop back down, Rush.
I don't understand that.
Well, and actually, now wait, wait a second.
I I don't want to get on your wrong side here, Woody.
But I You couldn't do that, Ross.
Well, um, okay, good.
Correct me if I'm wrong, though.
I don't think I don't think that the um the price of gasoline ever got as high as it should have been with the oil price as high as it was.
147 to 150 a barrel, it just the the price of gasoline did not reflect that.
It had gone up fast.
You're no you're you're there's no question that the gasoline price had skyrocketed up as the as the oil price went up.
But it never got as high as it should.
That that stopped it eventually stopped.
The tipping point's four bucks.
It's the national average stopped at 405 a gallon.
Well, it could have gone to five or at least 450 a gallon had it kept up with the price on the spot market.
Well, I should have started this out by saying I don't use gas, I use diesel, and that is a whole nother.
Well, no, yeah, that's that is.
That's a whole different way that you not only is it it's different in in terms of the price, but the taxes on diesel are far high.
Federal taxes on diesel are far higher than uh than on gasoline.
Now the the uh I forget who puts out the number, but the national average, regular unleaded, which who the hell buys that anymore?
Well, percentage.
What are you Don?
You don't buy regular unleaded.
What do you drive and you put regular?
Are you putting a regular unleaded in these General Motors cars?
Oh, I shouldn't have said that.
Well, anyways, it's it's down to 394 gallon.
Anyway, regular unleaded is not a 394 gallon.
Well down from its top of 405s.
You know, it's it's it's probably it's probably not gonna drop as uh as quickly unless uh if the drop continues, that see the drop is not happening as fast as the rise.
The decrease in price of oil is not happening as it shot up, is not at the same speed.
But look at here's here's the point.
Here's the point about it.
Regardless of this explanation, you are right about one thing.
And that is it's still way too high.
It has gotten artificially up there for a whole bunch of reasons, and people are tired of it.
And they see now the price is coming down because of the laws of supply and demand.
That means, I mean, if the president can sit there and say, okay, I'm getting rid of this executive order banning billing, uh drilling, and and if uh Harry Reid can open up more leases than the Democrats agree with it, and the price drops a combined twelve dollars a barrel, the American people can see that if we commit to drilling equally more supply, that we're eventually going to be on the right road and the right path to increasing supply and lowering the price, which is what we want.
Boy, am I catching it from everybody here on a staff and the email?
Everybody claims they use regular unleaded.
Everybody You people are driving cheap cars if you are.
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