Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
My friends, as Senator McCain would say, my friends, the Russians are doing us a huge favor by invading Georgia.
The oil bubble has thus burst.
I mean, we lost four bucks off the barrel price of oil this morning, and the dollar is rallying because of all this tumult over there.
Oil price now at $116 a barrel.
Greetings, my friends.
It's Friday.
Let's roll.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's Open Line Friday.
Yes, sir, Rebob, folks.
Lots of new Open Line Friday.
You know what that means.
We go to the phones, and the program is all yours.
Monday through Thursday, it's about what I care about.
But on Friday, I will fake it if you call about things that interest me not at all.
Telephone numbers 800-282-2882.
And the email address, El Rushbo at EIBnet.com.
Let me explain, with the assistance of my good friends at Stratford.com, what's going on here with this skirmish between the Russians and the Georgians.
And the bottom line of this, the bottom line, the Russians can do whatever they want.
Ossetia separated from Georgia in 1993 as part of the breakup of the Soviet Union.
And they've been having little skirmishes with Georgia and all this time.
But Ossetia, what?
What's so funny?
What is so funny about this now?
No, I'm not.
No, no.
The Eastern Bloc country, Georgia, for those of you who went to the American public school system, not the state of Georgia in the United States, but the country of Georgia, a former Soviet bloc little prisoner, much like Chechnya.
But anyway, South Ossetia separated from Georgia in 1993, and they've been having little skirmishes.
The Georgians have been trying to get them back in a fold, but it's been pretty minor.
But the fact is the Ossetians don't stand a chance against the Georgians.
But now that the Russians have moved in there, the Georgians don't stand a chance against the Russians.
The Russians can do whatever they want here.
As George Friedman at Stratfor.com makes very clear in his analysis today, the decision that the, well, not the decision, but the decision the Russians are making here is political.
You know, where do they stop?
Do they stop at Ossetia?
Do they go ahead and roll their tanks all the way into Georgia?
You know, Georgia's been a thorn in their side.
And of course, Putin, he's out of town.
He's over in China at the Olympics, but Medvedev is back home running this show.
And the Russians, if they could, would crush everybody, crush the Chechens, and they would crush the Georgians.
And they can if they want to.
The only way the Georgians have any chance is with us.
And I don't think we are going to get involved in this.
We're in Afghanistan right now and Iraq.
So the real question here is where will the Russians stop?
Because they can go wherever they want here.
The Georgians have no chance against them, just in a straight up and down military conflict.
It's a matter of size.
And people have been warning us that the old KGB guys that run Russia have just been waiting for a chance to reassert themselves.
And this has been building up.
Putin's been flying these bear bombers all over the world, as they used to do back in the days of the Gorbachev and Andropov, Brezhnev, Chernyenko, all these guys that were in power for a couple years and died, which is why Reagan never met with them.
So it's an interesting thing.
But one of the things that's happened here is that it has dropped the oil price for bucks.
And now people are starting to talk.
Audio soundbite number one, Mike.
People are starting to talk about, hey, the oil bubble.
It may have burst here.
Let's go back to May 8th, right here, behind this very golden EIB microphone and listen to the host that day.
Based on intelligence guided by experience.
These are bubbles, and this bubble is going to burst at some point because markets work.
Now, again, I don't know how cheap oil is going to drop, and I don't know how cheap gasoline is going to drop, but there's going to be a point where the price, whatever it gets up to, cannot be supported by the market.
Don't know if the day has been reached, but there are people now starting to talk about the oil bubble having burst.
Plus, the Euro is weakening, or it was this morning as a result of this attack with the Russians rolling into Georgia.
Now, do you realize, ladies and gentlemen, look at me.
Do you realize that oil has dropped from $150 a barrel to $116 a barrel since July 15th?
And do you know that oil speculators are getting rich?
Oh, yes, yes, yes.
Ladies and gentlemen, do you think the speculators only get rich when the price goes up?
How come Chucky Schumer is not talking about all these speculators driving the price down?
How come he's not talking about all these speculators making gazillions of dollars as the price falls?
Now, some of you are saying, but rush, but rush.
How can this be?
How can the speculators be making money when the price is falling?
Like 30, 40 bucks a barrel?
Well, there are short sellers in the speculator market, and they've been betting that the price of crude will drop.
And those that are selling short, betting the price to go down, are making a fortune.
Anybody named Chuck Yu Schumer will tell you, speculators are driving the prices down, and we have to end this speculation.
Remember when the speculators were driving the price up and everybody was having a cow?
We got to go after the speculators.
The Democrats, for once, dropped big oil as the villain and went after the speculators.
And they're Chuck Schumer, who wouldn't know a speculator if he ran into one, talking about what we got to do to punish these guys.
And now all of a sudden, the price is going down.
Speculators are doing just as well.
But isn't it interesting that nobody's concerned how much money they're making when the price goes down?
And isn't it interesting and nobody's even upset that the speculators are driving the price down?
Well, something's driving the price down, that people are speculating on the price of oil based on all these world events.
What goes up must come down, ladies and gentlemen, and it's happening.
So our liberal Congress wants to stop all this speculation that they blame for high oil prices.
Now they're going to have to blame the speculators for driving oil prices down, which is just another illustration of how silly the left is and how hysterical they get and how amplified they are by the drive-by media.
The lesson here is that the market works, especially when Congress is out of town.
Isn't it amazing, Rachel, the wonderful things that Rachel's in for dawn today?
Dawn took the kids up to Disney World.
Isn't it amazing?
Disney World, right?
Depcott Center, whatever the heck's up there.
She's gone.
Rachel's here.
Isn't it amazing what can happen when Congress leaves town?
There isn't even any blaming of the speculator market.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, I have some news that's going to anger you.
It is going to chill you.
As you know, brave Republicans in the House are continuing their battle to force Nancy Pelosi to bring the Democrats back to have an up or down vote on expanding the opportunity to drill for oil and war and offshore.
And they continue to make their points and they continue to fight.
This is an issue, as you know, as I have mentioned it to you, that just it's the issue that can change this entire campaign around.
Americans are angry, and it's not just at the price of oil and gasoline.
It is the related price increases, everything that happens as a result of that.
Food has gone up.
Practically everything has gone up.
Airline transportation has everything's gone up because of the price of oil.
Oil is coming down, but it's a market that's still fluid, and nobody can predict what's going to happen.
And whether the price continues to come down or not, we've gotten a warning here.
We need to do what we can to expand our own supply.
And the Republicans in the House are doing everything they can to see to it that this happens.
However, in the Senate, there is a new bipartisan coalition called the Gang of 10.
Five Democrats, five Republicans, led by Senator Lindsey Graham on the Republican side.
And they have just forged a compromise that basically cuts the Republicans in the House off at the knees, at least temporarily.
The Republicans in the Senate have given the Democrats in the Senate everything they want, everything Barack Obama wants in an energy bill.
I'll give you the details when we come back.
But just because it happened in the Senate does not mean it's doom and gloom, does not mean it's over with, because the Republicans in the House are still fighting this.
This is just a gang of 10 trying to get the Senate moving on this.
It's not official Senate bill yet.
It hasn't been passed there.
But the Republicans on our side caved totally to the Democrat demands on energy in a way that has to have Obama doing cartwheels if he's heard about it.
Quick timeout.
We'll be back and continue after this.
Hi, how are you?
Welcome back.
Rush Limbaugh.
Boy, I'm an eight.
Aside from this stupid move in the Senate, I am in such a fabulous mood, ladies and gentlemen.
The National Football League is back.
Preseason games last night.
I, of course, as a powerful, influential member of the media, have access to many of these games from the comfort of my own theater.
And tonight, the Steelers and Eagles are live on the NFL network at 7.30.
Man, I go into a withdrawal when television, as far as television is concerned, when the football season ends.
So, Brian, you excited about it being back?
I mean, I'll watch the first quarter of a preseason game when the regulars are playing.
I know it's just an exhibition.
It's just a full-fledged scrimmage in real uniforms.
It still is great having back.
All right.
They play four, except the teams that play in the Hall of Fame game play five preseason games.
So that means the Redskins and the Colts will have five preseason games.
Anyway, here's Kimberly Strossel in the Wall Street Journal today, her Potomac Watch column headlined, Republican Energy Fumble.
And I just want to read some of her verbatim here for you because it's right in the mummy.
Politics has its puzzling moments.
John McCain and most of the GOP experienced one late last week.
That was when five of their own set about dismantling the best issue Republicans have in the upcoming election.
It's taken time, but Senator McCain and his party have finally found in energy an issue that's working for them.
Righting voter discontent over high gas prices, the GOP has made anti-drilling Democrats this summer's headline.
Their enthusiasm has given conservative candidates a boost in tough races.
And McCain has pressured Obama into an energy debate where the Democrat has struggled to explain shifting and confused policy proposals.
Still, it was probably too much to assume that every Republican would work out that their side was winning this issue.
And so last Friday, in stumbled Senators Lindsey Graham, John Thune, Saxby Chambliss, Bob Corker, and Johnny Isaacson, alongside five Senate Democrats.
This gang of 10 announced a sweeping and bipartisan energy plan to break Washington's energy stalemate.
What they did was throw every vulnerable Democrat and Obama a life-preserver, and that's because the plan is a Democrat giveaway.
New production on offshore federal lands is left to state legislatures, and then in only four coastal states.
The regulatory hurdles are huge, and the bill bars drilling within 50 miles of the coast, putting off-limits some of the most productive areas, Alaska's, and war, thus still a no-go, if this becomes law.
The highlight of this bill that five Republicans joined five Democrats in, the highlight, $84 billion in tax credits, subsidies, and federal handouts for alternative fuels and renewables.
It's the Democrats that are running around touting alternatives and renewables.
That's what the Democrats want.
They don't want to drill.
They've got a war going on, oil.
They hate oil.
They have demonizing oil when there is no replacement, as we've been discussing.
And now, five Republicans led by Lindsey Graham apparently joined five Democrats and said, okay, your bill has $84 billion in tax credits and subsidies and federal handouts for alternative fuels and renewables.
Fine, we'll go along with that.
The gang of 10 intends to pay for all this in part by raising taxes on oil companies.
So five Republicans have joined five Democrats in the Senate to agree on legislation in the Senate to raise taxes on the oil companies, i.e., may not be calling it this, but a windfall profits tax.
In the middle of the Republicans finally having an issue on which they could turn this election around versus the Democrats.
Doing all of this while these brave Republicans in the House are fighting the odds in their own revolution, trying to stop Pelosi and force her back so that we can move forward on a bill that would expand drilling.
Five Republican senators joined five Democrats and basically hand the Democrats everything they want.
As Kimberly Strassel writes, the Sierra Club could not have penned this any better.
And so the Republican five has potentially given anti-drilling Democrats the political cover they need to neutralize energy through November.
Obama was thrilled.
He quickly praised the gang's bipartisan spirit and warmed up to a possible compromise.
Course, he means removing even the token drilling provisions that are now in the Senate bill, but he's only too happy for the focus to remain on the gang's efforts and, in particular, on the five Republicans providing his party its fig leaf.
This is unbelievable.
Well, it's not unbelievable.
This is the exact kind of thing, folks, that gave us campaign finance reform.
This is the exact kind of thing.
What was it, the gang of 14 on the nuclear option regarding judicial nominations?
I cannot explain it to you.
I would leave this to Lindsey Graham and Saxby Championship.
Some of these are good guys.
I just, I do not understand the tone deafness that they are exhibiting here politically.
I do not understand how they can not see what a winning issue they have.
Plus, I don't understand why in the world anything the Democrats want to do is attractive to these Republicans.
Raising taxes on oil companies, spending most of the money on alternatives and renewals, banning drilling in the most productive areas.
This is inexplicable.
But the Republicans in the House have not signed on to this.
This is just 10 senators that have come up with this compromise.
And the effort here, Ms. Strossel is right.
The effort here is to have a competing bill in the Senate so that nothing on this gets done before the November election.
And because of the difficulty it will be in getting both bills to the floor and then getting a compromise version passed and then go to conferences.
Too much to happen before the election because they're not going to be in Washington that much because everybody's going to be out on their own reelection campaigns.
But aside from all that, it's just befuddles me.
I read this morning.
This cannot, this cannot be true.
Yes, it can be.
We have a bunch of coward Republicans scattered around both houses of Congress.
We've got a bunch of Republicans who have been trained by the presidential nominee of their party that the way to advance yourself with the media and in Washington social circles is to agree with Democrats.
This is just mind-boggling.
We'll keep you posted on any further developments.
In the meantime, the Democrats, what's so frustrating about this is the disarray that the Democrats are in.
There is total disarray in the Democrat Party over the Clintons and what they're going to do at the convention.
Recreate 68, Mike Protest in Denver.
The brick girl.
The Democrats in the media, they just, they don't know what to do.
They're beside themselves with this national inquirer story, and they're begging him, don't come out here.
We can't let you speak.
There's a big lawsuit going on between the gay and lesbian groups and blacks in the Democrat Party.
And a big story coming next week in the Atlantic with internal Clinton memos from the campaign against Obama.
And I have a couple samples.
Back in a sec.
Yeah, I'll tell you.
I'll tell you who the five are again.
The five senators in the gang of 10 are Lindsey Graham, and this is McCain's best buddy.
McCain's best buddy in the Senate, Lindsey Graham.
And he cut him off at the knees in the middle of a campaign where McCain was getting some traction in the issue.
It's inexplicable.
So we've got Lindsey Graham.
We have John Theune.
I'm just stunned at this.
Saxby Chambliss, Bob Corker, and Johnny Isaacson, along five Senate Democrats, unnamed.
Doesn't matter who they are.
They always hang together.
They've gotten everything they want here.
As Kimberly Strostel writes, McCain, who had been commanding the energy debate, was left to explain why he, of all people, wasn't more enthusiastic about a bipartisan effort on energy.
See, this bipartisan garbage, every time there's bipartisan garbage, our side caves in.
It's like, you know, they asked Jesse Helms once, why didn't he compromise more?
They said, well, if the arguments between freedom and tyranny, why the hell should I give away anything?
If I'm for freedom, why should I give away anything?
Not saying this is freedom versus tyranny, but gosh, folks, as this keeps up, we're going to have tears.
Well, I think we do in terms of property rights and any number of other things.
So here's a bipartisan effort that McCain didn't support.
This one included drilling.
Limitations on drilling, and McCain wants to open up drilling.
It's become his issue.
And these five Republican senators last Friday just nuked it, at least in the Senate.
His camp, McCain's camp, was forced to take refuge in taxes, explaining that their boss could not sign up for a bill that included more.
That was McCain's out.
That's why he didn't support it.
And these $84 million worth taxes are on big oil.
Well, that's $84 million is what's going to be, or billion, whatever it is, going to be given to spend on renewables and alternatives.
The bipartisan Republican senators have undercut these efforts.
They've boosted Mary Landrew.
They even put a smile on Dingy Harry's face.
He had been struggling to tamp down the energy debate through November, where he hopes to increase his majority and permanently shelve drilling.
He's now counting on the gang to fruitlessly continue negotiations straight through the Senate's short September session and solve his problem for him.
And none of the Republican members, these five senators, are up for election.
They're not facing a tough election this year, which is the sort of security that leads to bad decisions.
And as Kimberly Stossel concludes, Strassel concludes, the decision these five senators made is the sort of thinking that could leave Republicans in a permanent minority.
It's inexplicable.
Don't ask me.
Your guess to this is as good as mine.
You can start with stupidity.
You can start with selfishness.
You can start with, well, I don't care about drilling in the Republican Party.
I care about my standing with the me.
You can go all of these various explanations.
And as I say, the Democrats just go through the headlines today, are just in all kinds of disarray.
Here's the, I have a story in a stack here.
Barry, the Matthiah, is going on vacation.
He's going over to Hawaii.
And the Democrats are in a tizzy there where he doesn't have a running mate.
Caroline Kennedy cannot find a running mate.
They got to keep John Edwards away from the convention somehow because the Inquirer story on his love child and his babe, whatever.
Byron York has a story today, by the way.
He says, the media all knows this truth.
They just don't want to be the ones to report it because this was the inquirer.
They didn't have any problems reporting BS about me and the Inquirer.
I mean, they didn't pause for five seconds.
And they didn't have any problem taking any news about OJ from the Inquirer.
But now that the Inquirer news is over, the Brett girl, oh, geez, I wish we don't have to report this and make it go away.
Could somebody else report this so I don't have to?
You got the Clintons.
He's going to speak on Wednesday.
She's going to speak on Tuesday.
She wants a roll call.
They're taking over this convention, it appears.
By the time they get through and this Brett Girl thing, his speech on Thursday night's going to be anticlimactic, climactic.
Now, on Monday, on Monday, ladies and gentlemen, some of this stuff might leak before Monday.
On Monday, the Atlantic magazine is going to publish a story written by, who's the reporter?
Josh Green.
Josh Green obtained 130, approximately internal memos.
There are about 200 internal memos that Josh Green obtained, 130 or so of which he plans to scan and post online.
These are former advisors to Hillary Clinton who are now in a tizzy over this piece in the Atlantic Monthly that chronicles the inner workings of the Hillary campaign.
When the piece is published sometime next week, readers will be able to scroll through the memos from people like Mark Penn, Harold Ickes, Jeff Garon, to see what exactly was going on inside the infamously fractured Clinton organization.
And this has some former team members in panic, and I'll tell you why.
Because I myself, as a powerful, influential member of the media, have obtained shocking lifted sentences from a memo.
Shocking.
Shocking.
Clinton team, internal memos, referring to Barack Obama as unelectable.
Clinton team, internal memos, saying Barack Obama has a lack of American roots.
Clinton team internal memo.
Obama is unelectable except perhaps against Attila the Hun.
This, that's it.
Those are the three references that I have.
Now, there are 130 of these 200 memos going to be posted online.
And no wonder the Clinton team's in a tizzy.
Because this Atlantic Monthly guy got hold of these.
And they're trying to peg everybody.
Republican Party is racist.
They're trying to peg everybody that Republican Party is sexist and bigoted and homophobic.
And when these memos are seen, the three things I have are just any indication of what was said about Barry at the Messiah by the Clinton interworking team.
And so.
Who did?
Well, oh, there's no question who's.
Mr. Snirdley just asked me who leaked this and why.
Do you have to really think about that?
Do you really have to think about who leaked this?
Who do you think?
Who do you think leaked it?
You don't think she would?
You don't you'd never ever trust a Clinton?
Nothing that happens with the Clintons is a coincidence.
You don't think she'd leak this?
You don't think he would leak it?
You don't think somebody with ties, maybe their fingerprints aren't going to be on this.
But there's any number of usual suspects in this.
But I mean, who would be able to get their hands on internal Clinton memos?
Ladies and gentlemen, they say the campaign was fractured and disorganized and so forth.
Could it be, I mean, it wouldn't be Patty Salise Doyle who left the Clinton camp, got canned.
Over now working for the Messiah, the one.
So it doesn't matter who leaked it.
It's going to come out, and everybody's going to be waiting with bated breath all weekend because I think more of these things are going to leak.
The point of this all is with this kind of disarray.
Here, here, financialtimes.com.
Democrat jitters as Obama heads for Hawaii.
Obama advisor blames McCain ad for poll dip.
They are worried.
Grab audio soundbite number 15.
We've put together a montage of the drive-by media.
Why isn't Barack Obama running away with this election?
Why do you think that Obama is not doing better?
Why do you believe he's not doing even better?
Why is this election close?
Why the race is so close?
Why it is as close as it is.
Why is the race even close?
Obama really should be further ahead.
Why the race is so close?
Okay, now, aside from the, I mean, the obvious question is, who do these people think they are?
On what basis should he be so far ahead?
According to who should he be so far ahead?
Well, according to them, because they've pulled out all the stops, they've given this guy every tailwind they could give him.
They have been pumping this guy puffed pieces.
They've been treating him like the president.
They've been treating him like royalty.
They've been treating him like the Messiah.
And that's why they can't understand.
Plus, McCain's such a wrinkled old white guy, like Paris Hilton said.
By the way, I hope, ladies and gentlemen, I'm given to understand Paris Hilton is going to send a video to the presidents of Russia and Georgia, warning them of the dire consequences to the environment should this war continue and expand.
And I think that's good civics.
She does not mention the civilian deaths that might occur in the war and have occurred, by the way, but the damage to the environment.
At any rate.
So he should be so ahead.
Why?
Well, because Republicans always lose.
And the country always loves Democrats.
And the Democrats are just such a big party.
And everybody hates Bush.
And everybody hates the war in Iraq.
And Obama makes such a good speech.
Everybody wants change and has hope and the future.
And why is he not doing better?
We can't figure it out.
Hey, ask yourselves a question.
The guy goes to Germany and rips his own country.
The guy comes back and rips his own country to a seven-year-old little girl.
The guy thinks elevating pressure in your tires replaces drilling for oil.
And don't tell me he didn't say it because he did.
The first thing he said was exactly that.
We could save as much as we're going to get from drilling if we would just properly inflate the tires.
No, sir.
We cannot inflate our way out of this.
So anyway, the drive-bys are in a tizzy.
The polling data shows that the American people, vastly, great majority, want to drill here, drill now, want more oil.
The Clintons are about to turn a Democrat convention into a war zone.
And five Republican senators join five Democrats to undercut the entire one issue that gives McCain and Republicans a slam dunk over the Democrats, and that's drilling.
Back in a sec.
Why is Obama down?
Why is Obama down?
Oh, no.
Why isn't Obama leaving?
Why is he leaving by double digits?
Why is he just running away with this?
The question's starting to resonate.
You know, these drive-bys, you drive-bys had better stop asking that question on television.
You can ask it to yourselves on the planes and on the buses and in the bars, but you go and ask that question on television.
And I mean, it's a mantra now, just like Gravitas was.
It's on every cable network by every host.
Why can't Obama win?
Why isn't he in double digits?
Why isn't he running away with this?
You keep asking the question, drive-bys, and it's going to start resonating with people.
And I think it has started resonating with people.
Maybe the question's resonating in this way.
What does anybody know about this guy, drive-bys?
What does anybody really know about this guy?
What does anybody think he or she knows about Obama?
Folks, ask yourselves.
I know which camp you're in here.
What do you know about the guy?
You know nothing.
You know Jeremiah Wright.
You know Bill Ayers.
You know soaring, meaningless, vapid rhetoric.
You know, Massachusetts.
What do you know about the guy?
What we know about the guy, what we think we know about the guy, is enough to warn us off.
Maybe the answer is all we know is what the media tells us.
Well, what do they know about him?
They won't even tell us about John Edwards.
The media will not even tell us about the Brick girl.
What in the world are they holding back on Obama?
Now, this deal, by the way, this gang of 10 deal, get this.
And I talked about some of the regulations in this bill that are onerous.
Try this.
This deal would allow drilling if and when the EPA and PETA and states and cities and counties and the ACLU clear the way.
It would put up more barriers to drilling, which is what the Democrats want because they want no drilling, period.
Five Republicans go along with it.
By the way, Snurdy, as to your leak question, the Clinton staff is who's nervous here, not the Clintons.
The Clintons are very happy that this is going to happen.
But the Clinton staff, some of these people, if Barry gets elected, they're going to need gigs.
They're going to need jobs in the Democrat Party.
They're going to need jobs somewhere within the Democrat hierarchy.
And here there are memos coming out referring to this guy as not native, lack of American roots, unelectable, except perhaps against Attila the Hun.
It could be Mark Penn.
You know, Mark Penn, the staff, the Clinton staff hated Mark Penn.
They hated him all over the place.
They wanted him out of there.
They finally got rid of him.
Could be payback time.
Who knows?
Doesn't matter who did it.
We're just glad that it's happening.
Here's Stuart in Morocca?
Moraga, California.
Moraga, California.
Great to have you here, Stuart.
Thank you for calling.
Thank you, Rush.
I'm calling you on an iPhone that you generously gave me last November, and I am taking the opportunity to thank you for it.
I tried to send you a card, but it got bounced back.
I wanted to comment today on Lindsey Graham.
It's really ironic that he's doing to John McCain exactly what John McCain did to George Bush, which is organizing a bipartisan group of senators to cut him off at the knees.
Yeah, this did catch McCain by surprise, and he was not, well, it did, because it put him in a very ironic situation.
McCain has made his bones being the bipartisan guy, working with the other guys.
So here's Gramnesty, who is McCain Jr.
And I think this sees this is how McCain got to be who he is.
So Gramney says, okay, I'll try it.
And in the process, McCain said, so McCain, the only way he could oppose this is like, I'm not for tax increases and there are too many tax increases in this bill.
That's not.
But it did.
It just took the issue.
Well, he hasn't done it yet because the bill is not passed in the Senate.
It's just an indication we've got these five.
By the way, another explanation.
I left off.
The most important thing to look at.
You know, when I was going through, folks, I can't explain it.
You can make up whatever explanation you want.
They're stupid.
They want good coverage in the media, whatever it is.
Follow the money.
Follow the money.
Well, in this case, follow the money.
I mean, use your imagination.
Campaign contributions.
Lobbyists.
They're not up for election this year.
They don't face serious opposition.
So the answer to almost every question, particularly in politics, can be found at the end of the trail of big bucks.
Yesterday, Obama told a seven-year-old little girl, country not what it once was, country sucks.
Yesterday, a seven-year-old kid told Michelle Obama about Iraq, we need to finish what we started.