Am I the only guy out here that was a little bit, I'm not going to say put off, disturbed, concerned about watching the swimming last night on the Olympics?
I mean, the Olympics was great, and that great relay with Michael Phelps and company, the four swimmers from the U.S., upset France.
Did you see that?
NBC supposedly has great numbers.
Everybody's watching this.
And now they've got these swim trunks, which, trust me, they are an improvement from the old ones.
Anything would be.
But they've got the swim trunks now where they're like the old wrestling tights.
They got the tights and then the straps that go up like a tank top.
And after his portion of the relay, Phelps was up there.
Maybe I'm just seeing things.
But he pulled down the top portion of his swimsuit.
And folks, I'm being generous when I say he pulled it down.
It was all the way down there in the nether regions.
It was disturbing.
I'm watching this.
I'm going, oh, this is great.
The Americans are knocking off the French.
Wonderful, great.
He could get his eight gold medals, but pull up the trunks, huh?
Pull up the trunks.
Am I the only?
Just kind of welcome back.
Third hour now underway in the Rush Limbaugh program.
Jason Lewis here.
That reminds me.
I was playing golf in the beautiful northwoods of Minnesota over the weekend, America's best-kept secret for vacation land.
And up on the beautiful lakes, boating, playing golf, some great golf courses up there.
And I'm telling you, it was hot.
All this talk about global warming, I got to admit, I got to admit, speaking of swimming and speaking of golf, it was hot out there in the golf course up there.
Well, how hot was it?
Snirdling and Mike.
Well, it was so hot, the only head cover I needed was a speedo on the golf course.
That's pretty hot, if you think about it.
In the conflict over Georgia, the Ruskies are on the move and not just to aid this breakaway province.
They are now close to the capital of Georgia, which broke away, of course, from the Soviet Union in 1991 after the disillusion of the evil empire.
And people are now saying, and I just saw on the monitor here an interview with President Bush, although I did not get what he said, but this is becoming an international crisis at the time of the Olympics, oddly enough.
So the Russians are in Georgia.
Somebody asked Congressman Dennis Kucinich about this today, and he said, how close are they to Atlanta?
I thought that was kind of revealing that he would, no, I want to, this is actually more serious than that.
The fact of the matter is, this is going to be a test for the next president.
And I think this is playing out in a presidential campaign in a way that will allow us to gauge who is going to be more attuned to preserving our interests, our geopolitical interests, our strategic interest in this U.S. ally that has a vital pipeline to the West from the Caspian Sea.
And McCain has been all over this thing today.
He's demanding that Russia be removed from the G8, so go back to the G7.
He's talking about some saber rattling.
He's talking about getting tough on Vladimir Putin, who has not given up the top job at the Kremlin.
I think we all know that.
There are two fundamental things we can take from this Russian aggression in Georgia over the weekend.
Putin's in charge.
Forget about the Russian president, his handpicked successor.
Putin's still in charge.
And the UN is toothless.
You know, this international body.
No wonder the U.S. Senate, you know, back in the first part of this century, rejected the League of Nations.
They knew that these international bodies weren't worth much.
And we're finding that out, except that we have to pay, what, 22% of their dues, the UN dues, plus more when it comes to peacekeeping missions?
So we're paying the bill.
And what do we get from the UN?
Here we go.
You internationalists out there who believe in these great international bodies.
Let the UN get Russia to stop the aggression.
Don't hold your breath.
That's the lesson from all of that.
I want to get to some calls too.
1-800-282-2882.
And as promised, I also want to touch on renewables because we now have as the free market, capitalist-loving, private property-loving individuals, Americans, we now have the polls on drilling.
We now have the issue.
The fact of the matter is the American people want us to, quite frankly, drill for our own resources and expand the world market, the world pool of oil, has to lower the prices.
We are not a nation that denies itself access to its own resources.
Other countries do that.
Well, America doesn't do that, and yet we have, thanks to the environmental movement.
And anybody out there who's still a sitting member of the Sierra Club, and I'm talking about some Republican office holders as well, talk about disillusioned.
Talk about getting real.
I mean, it is long past due to understand that the environmental mainstream today is nothing of the sort, that they are the obstacle to freedom, to private property, and to drilling.
And I mean, nobody's talking about upsetting the environment.
We've got offshore platforms in the midst of Hurricane Katrina.
There were no oil spills.
We're talking about 2,000 acres out of 19.6 million in Anwar, of which could give us a million and a half barrels a day, 10.4 billion barrels in Anwar, all for the taking.
And for the sake of preserving someplace that's overrun with large gnats or mosquitoes half the summer, never gets warm and is dark 60 days out of the year.
This is not Alaskan wilderness, this pristine wilderness.
This is frozen tundra.
You know, there's a pipeline up there, a trans-Alaskan pipeline.
It is going to go bad if it doesn't get oil in it.
They have to have this sort of lubricating process every now and then.
So there are lots of reasons to do it.
We've got the issue on our side.
The fallback provision on the part of the anti-energy left is always, well, we need to focus on renewables, whether it's Nancy Pelosi, whether it's Al Franken in Minnesota, although he's 12, 13 points down, it doesn't matter who it is, Barack Obama.
Barack Obama said the other day, we must end the age of oil.
We need a transformation of our economy, and by God, I'm willing to tax you to do it.
$150 billion over 10 years to achieve this energy independence.
Who are we kidding here?
Who are we kidding?
Russia said this before.
It's self-evident.
We are not going to be able to replace oil in our lifetimes.
I'm going to go out further than 30 years in our lifetimes.
And indeed, we may never have to replace it.
The peak oil theory was always just that, a theory that has been disproven.
There are some geologists out there who are now saying they're starting to see some oil deposits replenish themselves.
You include oil shale.
You include the estimates of oil worldwide.
And we may have, good heavens, trillions of barrels out there, not billions of barrels.
We may have trillions.
I mean, there's 1.8 trillion we're pretty certain of in barrels of oil in the oil shale.
You know, and when the Democrat left says, well, you're not going to be able to get at this stuff, when they estimate that, gosh, it's only going to get 3% of the world's reserves.
Why ruin the environment to get 3%?
You know how they estimate that?
They estimate that at $60 a barrel oil.
They say at $60 a barrel, here's what the Energy Information Administration says we would get from offshore drilling.
What you get at $60 billion a barrel is entirely different than what you get at $100 a barrel.
Because as the price goes up, previously expensive methods of extraction become doable.
They become in the money in stock parlance.
So we've got more oil than we know what to do with, quite frankly.
There is no need, unless you believe in the hype of global warming, even though what did I see just the other day on the global warming issue?
Someone discovered the logs of these old British naval vessels.
They found the logs of them.
You know what they found?
Massive climate change in Europe long before the footprint of industrial greenhouse gases.
Now, I don't know how much evidence we're going to have to accumulate.
How many of the global warming models predicted, as now the IPCC admits, we would have a 10-year hiatus in global warming.
Even the proponents of global warming now are saying we're in the midst of a hiatus.
We don't know why, but we're not going to have warming until 2015, 2017.
Then it's going to resume.
The problem is none of the global warming models predicted that.
And this has always been the fundamental fallacy of Al Gore and the global warming types.
That is, the models do not comport with the observation.
You can take observational data, apply it to the models, and they disconnect.
There's a dichotomy there.
The Hadley Institute over at the UK, in the UK, says, look, it hasn't warmed since 1998.
We've just been through a couple of the harshest winters, 2007, 2008, below normal temperatures.
At some point, they're going to have to realize that carbon dioxide may be a byproduct.
That, in fact, the changes in our orbit, the changes in water vapor, which is part of the carbon dioxide issue, the changes in ocean currents, the changes in solar flares have much more impact on the Earth's climate than man-made carbon dioxide, which is minuscule, minuscule compared to worldwide carbon dioxide that is natural.
But nevertheless, they say in the name of global warming, we've got to go to alternative fuels.
There's one little problem with that, my friends, and that is this.
None of them work.
I repeat, none of them work.
The tiny town of Wilmer, Minnesota is set to waste $3 million, actually $6 million total, to put two wind turbines up at their high school.
Symbolism.
$6 million for the Wilmer Municipal Utilities to put up a windmill, two windmills, that is going to give, what, two megawatts of energy a piece.
Oh, by the way, they admit that it's going to be intermittent because there's a nasty little thing about wind power.
It doesn't blow all the time.
You got T-Boo and Pickens out there getting a lot of press.
We're going to have wind up and down people worried about the NAFTA superhighway.
We're going to have windmills from Texas to Minnesota if some of these people get their way.
And then we're going to run cars on natural gas.
Well, I already told you about natural gas.
The price is spiking because we are, in effect, banning coal-fired power plants due to global warming nonsense.
So now we're going to put that in cars.
You're going to see natural gas that is just clearly unaffordable.
It's already unaffordable to heat your house in some cases.
But when it comes to windmill, did you know the federal government has to sub or subsidize windmill production?
It subsidizes wind power through production tax credits of about 2 cents per kilowatt, 1.8 cents per kilowatt, roughly.
Did they get an accelerated depreciation?
Everybody talks about big oil getting accelerated write-offs.
No, that's big wind.
Several states, including Minnesota, have required now the utilities to consume wind, raising the cost of your utility bill, along with solar panels.
But as I said, the wind farms have to rely on conventional power plants anyway, because sometimes the wind doesn't blow.
Then where are you going to get your power from that particular source?
Oh, did I mention how much land wind farms will take?
How land-intensive it is?
They produce a fraction of the energy of a conventional power plant, but they require 100 times the acreage.
Let me give you a comparison of footprints from the National Center for Policy Analysis.
To produce a 1,000 megawatt power plant, a wind farm would require 192,000 acres or 300 square miles.
A nuclear plant would need about 1,700 acres or 2.65 square miles.
Coal-fired power plant, about three square miles.
So you got three square miles versus 300 to produce, by the way, less energy because they get only about 30%.
Oh, and the transmission lines are going to be massive.
What's the figure I saw the other day?
12,000 miles of electric lines to connect the wind turbines.
This is environmental.
Solar panels, oh, I got bad news for you.
It costs anywhere from 15 to 40 grand to install one.
It would take you 20 to 25 years to get the cost recovery out of that in reduced energy bills.
You've got a couple of proponents of solar power.
A professor out at Cal Berkeley now admits it's a loser without the government subsidies, which can account for as high as $10,000 per house.
Solar doesn't work.
Windmills don't work.
And guess what?
Ethanol doesn't work.
And the worst thing we ever, the worst thing the president ever said, quite frankly, was this, I think it was the State of the Union speech a couple of years ago when he talked about how bad it was we were addicted to oil.
No, that's not a bad thing.
It's the cheapest, most efficient, and abundant energy source.
And so is coal.
So is natural gas if used properly.
But ethanol, for crying out loud, it's so bad now that the Texas governor, Rick Perry, asked the EPA to waive the requirements of the 2007 energy law.
7.5 billion gallons of renewable fuel a year had to be added to the nation's fuel supply by 2012, going to 36 billion gallons of ethanol by 2022.
Now, let's see.
We're already taking out 30 million of corn acres to produce inefficient fuel, driving up the price of food.
That doesn't work either.
I'm Jason Lewis, back right after this on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Oh, by the way, the EPA denied Rick Perry's waiver to suspend the ethanol mandates.
We're going to be stuck with high food prices and high gas prices until that happens.
We now have, I understand, the anti-Barack on the line.
This guy's resume is something, folks.
Colonel West, Colonel Alan West, he's running for Congress down in Florida's 22nd congressional district, is an amazing individual.
He has a B.S. and M.S. in political science, 22 years in the military with a bronze star, three notorious service medals, three Army Commendation Medals, and yes, he's a black conservative.
Joining us now is Colonel Alan West.
Welcome to the Rush Limbaugh program with me, Jason Lewis, Colonel.
Well, thanks so much, Jason, for having me on, and just good afternoon and to your listening audience as well.
Snurdley tells me you are the anti-Barack.
Well, I guess that when you look at what some of the things that he stands for and the things that I stand for, I mean, we're diametrically opposed.
And that's just the difference in how I was brought up with my parents in Georgia, looking at individual responsibility and accountability and not looking for anyone else to try to come out and take care of you and your life, but to set your own course.
Yeah, I want to talk about your military experience because I think everybody should hear this and your, I think, rather rare ability or rare willingness to stand up and say, no, I'm not going to compromise.
I'm not going to kowtow.
If you want to throw mud at me, you can go ahead.
But I'm going to risk my career to protect my troops.
And as you said, quote, I'll go to hell with a can of gasoline, close quote, to protect my troops.
Tell the listeners about that episode and what came of it.
Yeah, what happened was we had information about a gentleman that was feeding data about our patrols and things to some Saddam loyalists, primarily Fedayen types, and the ambushes in our area just north of Baghdad had gone up.
And this guy was stonewalling the female interrogators that we had assigned to us.
And I went and did a psychological intimidation trick on him by firing my 9mm service pistol back over the back of his head.
And he brought forth the information.
Wait, Did you check with the American Red Cross first, Colonel?
Well, you know, that's one of the things that people have to understand.
Leaders in combat have to make tough decisions.
And you have a moral obligation to take care of your soldiers.
And I think that's one of the critical things that I look to bring as a congressman is to take care of my constituents and take care of the American people.
And sometimes you have to stand alone.
And as I did then, you take responsibility and accountability for those actions.
You don't whine and complain, but you say, I'm here.
This is what I decided to do.
The institution now can make their decision.
And then you go on from there.
And I was fined $5,000.
After I got back from Iraq, I went ahead and put in my retirement papers and was given, you know, received an honorable discharge for my 22-year service.
And I relocated to the family in South Florida and taught high school for a year, went back to Afghanistan as a civilian advisor to the Afghan Army.
And some people thought that I had the right type of qualities to bring to the United States Congress, and that's what we seek to do.
And, of course, protecting the United States, national security is the first and foremost object of the central government.
And I believe that's something that a lot of people don't understand.
They think we're running a national charity out of Washington.
You know, people like you risk their lives to keep us free so we can contribute to whomever we choose.
Absolutely right.
You know, when you look at the Constitution, the federal government has five basic mandates.
It's to establish justice, ensure the domestic tranquility, promote the general welfare, not provide welfare, but provide for the common defense and secure the blessings of liberty.
So what the people should be doing in Washington, D.C. is setting the conditions for our life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, just protecting those things.
But right now, you see a federal government that has gotten outside of its mandates, and really we're moving toward a nanny state which could become a socialist state where they seek to come.
You got that right.
Let's come back and talk about this.
Let's come back and talk about this a little more with Colonel Alan West running for Congress in Florida's 22nd congressional district.
And I want to talk about some of the specific issues down there more with Colonel West when we come back.
Colonel Alan West, 22 years in the military, winner of a bronze star, three Army commendation medals, black conservative running for Congress in Florida's 22nd district, and was feeded at the New York Young Republican Club, their fundraiser up in Manhattan not long ago.
Colonel Alan West, thanks for hanging on during the break there.
I really think it's important to get the word out, obviously, vis-a-vis your view of the Constitution and enumerated powers doctrine, i.e., if it's not in the Constitution, the federal government can't do it.
And that's why military service and or national security is first and foremost for the central government.
That's why the whole thing was formed to begin with.
But more importantly than that, some of the social ramifications of a black conservative running.
We're starting to hear, Colonel West, all this talk about, well, is Obama playing the race card or is McCain reaction racist?
And I don't think race has anything to do with politics today.
For instance.
No, it doesn't.
And really, the key thing that we should be talking about is character.
And, you know, when Senator Obama stands and says, I don't look like the guys on the dollar bill or they're going to come after me because, you know, I have a different name and all those things.
You know, America is not looking to have a leader that claims to be a victim.
America is looking for someone to be a leader.
And, you know, if Putin or Ahmadinejad or some of these other guys take some actions, you know, the last thing we need is a president to say that they're doing this because they don't like my name.
So we need someone that can stand upon their character and not, you know, start all these sideshow anecdotes and Mickey Mouse tactics that the American people are sick and tired of.
Frankly, I think it was playing the race card.
But here's why it isn't racism in America.
If you had a candidate like yourself, and I think you're probably a pretty good prototype, but if you had a candidate at the presidential level who was as eloquent as Barack Obama, and he does speak well, he's a smart guy, all of that, but he was a black conservative, he'd be ahead 15 points by now.
Oh, absolutely.
There is no doubt about it because this country, America, is a center-right country.
And we are very nervous about that far-left agenda.
And when you start to hear a presidential candidate talking about taxing the profits of a private industry and redistributing that wealth and checks to other Americans, that should cause concern.
Because if he wants to do that with one private industry, what keeps him from doing it with another private industry?
So we need to start talking about the issues.
We need to start talking about the character.
And, you know, this energy independence has so many outputs.
It affects our national security.
It affects our economy.
It affects, you know, just several second and third order things that go on for our future.
And that's something that we have to start looking at, as well as the issue of legal immigration that you don't hear a lot of people talk about as well.
You are an expert on military affairs, but one other measure of our strength as a nation, of course, is our economy, which not only funds the military, but represents the growth of prosperity and the growth of a healthy, free country.
And you talk about the taxes where Barack Obama said, look, I'll just take those windfall profits tax.
Without ever defining what a windfall profits tax is, there are a number of other industries that have higher net profit margins than the oil industry.
As you point out, is he going to tax those?
But that's in addition to raising the top federal rate to nearly 40 percent, phasing out itemized deductions for those who are unlucky enough to be successful.
So a combined marginal rate would be equal to 47 percent.
You throw on his social security tax of 12.4 percent on those, once again, only making $250,000 or more, and you're going to have an after-tax return that's going to be, in percentage terms, declining by over 30 percent.
Now, how many Americans, especially, quite frankly, the productive wealthy, are going to work as hard when their after-tax rate of return has been reduced by 32 percent, according to Michael Boskin?
Well, they're not, and you're going to end up stagnating your economy.
And there are four elements to a nation's power is diplomatic, informational, military, and economic.
So we have to see our economy as an element of our national power.
And the one thing that Senator Obama is bringing about is not change.
It is just going right back to the same old Marxist, socialist economic theories that have gone on for years, where you pit the proletariat against the bourgeoisie and you rally the masses.
And so there's nothing really new under the sun.
And the true thing about the change is that's all that would be left in your pocket if you go ahead and follow along with his theories.
It's like the new motto we talked about earlier.
And Barack's got a new motto.
This is the greatest country on earth.
Now let me change it.
Absolutely.
You know, I can't understand that.
And I also saw the comment that he made to the little seven-year-old girl when she asked why he was running for president.
You know, I've been to 13 different countries, and I can tell you that the United States is one of the greatest countries ever in the history of this world.
And there are some problems that we can deal with, but still, we have something fantastic that's going on in this country, and we just need to get to that greatness, and we need to ensure that we secure the future and the legacy of this republic for our children and grandchildren.
That's the critical thing we need to be talking about right now.
What are some of the issues in Florida's 22nd congressional district, especially vis-a-vis energy?
Yes.
Well, of course, the 22nd district runs along the coastline, but the people down here understand that the exploration of our oil resources is very important to our economic prosperity and to our national security, because there are two things that come out of Saudi Arabia: the oil and Wahhabist ideology.
We are fueling the people who are fighting against us, being at Saudi Arabia, being at Venezuela, Mexico, Iran.
I mean, we see what's going on with Russia.
China is even going into deals with Cuba to do some drilling off of the coast of Cuba.
So we have to get to the point where we are developing all of our energy resources, the full spectrum, from the fossil fuels to the coal to the natural gas to the US.
And there's been a change.
There's been a change in the Florida outlook over that, hasn't there?
It's a huge change because now all of a sudden you're starting to hit people in their pocketbook and they see that.
And even if it's dropping right now, you still have to protect yourself so that it does not happen again, just the same as it did in the late 70s.
So you have that, which also ties into our economy.
And I think another thing that's really important down here is legal immigration.
But education is a very big part of what's going on in South Florida because, once again, we have to start securing the future.
And the future is having a solid, educated group of people that can be productive citizens.
Colonel Alan West, Republican candidate for Congress in the 22nd congressional district, before I let you go, I think you said something earlier I want to tie into all of this because in the final analysis, what we're really fighting for is freedom.
That's what you fought for for 22 years.
Economics is just the financial manifestation of freedom.
You don't have rights to your private property.
You don't have rights to keep what you earn.
You can have all the free speech rights in the world.
You don't have freedom.
You're not free.
And when you said earlier, you talked about what's going on in Russia and what's going on in Venezuela has a rationale to get more American oil out on the world market to lower the price and lessen their influence.
I couldn't agree more.
But think of something else that's going on in Russia and Venezuela you just mentioned, and that is in Russia, I think it was British Petroleum, and it couldn't have happened to a nicer group, but that's beyond petroleum now, I guess.
But they went into a joint venture in Russia, and they became very popular.
It became very profitable with some Russian conglomerates.
And you know what happened a couple of weeks ago?
The authorities in Moscow just said, well, guess what?
This is becoming so popular, we're going to expropriate what the foreign investment was, BP's investment, for all practical means.
But we're just going to take it, and now it's ours.
In Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, it's simply nationalizing the banks, nationalizing the oil fields, taking away property.
This is what tyrants do.
You cannot divorce the rights to property from the rights to freedom.
Absolutely.
And when you look at the OPEC nations, most of those are tyrannical, despotic rulers with autocracies or theocracies.
What you have going on right now is something that a lot of people are not talking about.
It is the survival of Western civilization, the basic tenets of individual rights and freedoms, the understanding of liberty, rule of law, constitutional democracy.
That is what is truly under attack across the world.
And we have to do it.
And it makes you nervous.
And it makes patriots.
It makes everyone nervous.
It makes patriots like you, Colonel Alan West, very nervous when you hear Messrs. Clinton, Hillary, or Bill, or Barack Obama say, I want to take those oil company profits and do this and this and this.
That doesn't sound a whole lot different than Mr. Chavez or Mr. Putin at times.
And that ought to make everybody nervous.
Now, if folks want to get involved in your campaign, where do they call?
They can call 561-329-2292.
And they can also go to our website, which is www.allenwestforcongress.com.
And Alan is spelled with two L's and an E.
And I would really appreciate people visiting our website and getting a look at our message and vision for not just Congressional Edition 22, but also for America.
I don't think you have any idea how many black conservatives and Americans, white or black, you represent, but that black conservative movement, which has been unreported for years in the mainstream media, is a growing force in America.
And we're going to make sure that it is because, you know, the black community has divested, I mean, has invested too much into the democratic message of social welfare programs, and it has just destroyed our communities.
And it is time that we stand up and we look to alternatives to make sure that we make ourselves independent and we can have independent thought and we can choose for ourselves.
Well, a real pleasure to talk with you, Colonel Alan West, and good luck down there in the campaign trip.
Absolutely, and God bless you.
Thank you, sir.
I'm Jason Lewis back to.
We'll get in some more phone calls right to the top of the hour right here in the Rush Limbaugh program.
Don't go away.
Very interesting guy, Colonel Alan West.
Help out if you can in Florida or across the country these days.
1-800-282-2882, Jason Lewis here.
Minnesota's Mr. Wright in for America's Mr. Wright with talent on loan from Rush.
Don't forget to check out RushLimbaugh.com as well.
Again, if you want to help out, Alan, it's 561-329-2292 is the number or AlanWestForCongress.com.
We don't do that much.
I know Rush doesn't do that much, but I'm glad we could because I do think it's important to break the media template.
Well, you're black, you've got to vote Democrat.
There's a growing number of minority conservatives out there or conservative minority members, if you will, whether they're Hispanic or black or whatever, and they just don't get the play in the mainstream media.
They always go to black leaders.
I didn't know there was a leader of the black community, but apparently they're all liberal.
So I just wanted to get that out there, and I'm glad we did.
Hillary Rodham Clinton will headline her own night at the Democratic National Convention, speaking on the second night, Tuesday, followed by Bill on Wednesday.
What's the matter?
John Edwards wasn't available?
1-800-282-2882, Zach in Groton.
Is that right?
You're on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hi.
Hi, how are you?
Good, sir.
How are you?
Good, thanks.
It's actually Groton, Groton, Connecticut.
Groton, where is that?
That's right next to New London on the waterfront.
I got you.
All right.
I was calling into the Democratic congressman here in the state of Connecticut, Mr. Larson, and the fourth time that somebody from my office called in, they started hanging up.
They wouldn't talk to us about wanting to get the Democratic congressman back in there to vote for a new energy bill.
Yeah, it depends, I suppose, on your member.
If you're talking to a blue dog, the ostensible more moderate Democrats, the Blue Dog Democrats, they will listen because they're the ones that are willing to vote for this on the floor if Pelosi and Reed ever allow a vote, especially Pelosi, the speaker.
Some of the dyed-in-the-wool left-wing anti-capitalists, anti-private property, anti-energy exploration, anti-business Democrats, I think I got it all in there, are just beyond hope.
They are not going to listen.
So if you really wanted to focus this down, I mean, extrapolating from what Congressman Penn said, you would focus on the Democratic members of Congress who are on the margin, the Blue Dog Democrats.
But I still say anytime you get a Democrat to hang up on you, you've got to do something right.
Well, you know what?
What's really funny, Jason, was we finally got him to pick up and talk to us here a little bit ago.
And Lisa from his office said, quote, that the conservatives were not considerate enough to vote when they were in the House prior to August 1st.
What?
And the Republicans had an equal opportunity to vote when they were in-house, and they chose not to.
That's simply not true.
That's simply not true.
Pelosi had denied any opportunity for amendments to come to the floor that would have allowed drilling.
So there was no opportunity to vote.
I know that.
This lady was just spouting off at the mouth.
Well, look, the bottom line is this.
Their back is against the wall.
Here's the question.
Are the Republicans, are the Republicans collectively, and I mean including Senate Republicans and a few, shall we say, liberal members, are they doing enough?
Is McCain doing enough to exploit this issue?
Because the issue is on our, the people are on our side.
The public policy is on our side.
The question is, is there still the enthusiasm over this energy issue?
I mean, the president is doing a pretty darn good job right now, but one could arguably ask, where were the Republicans back in 2002 and three and four?
So now they're finally coming into the issue, but are they doing enough?
Are they doing enough to really exploit the issue?
Unfortunately, they're not.
And that's why people like ourselves have to pick up the slack and try to get it motivated.
As you are.
Thanks for checking in in Buffalo, New York.
Doug, you're next up on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
High.
All right.
Say, I'm afraid that the bottom line of the Democratic no-drill policy is going to be the need for, and probably maybe even in the platform, every American is going to be expected to cut back to one meal per day and maybe even less than that for dinner because no oil equals no food.
And the agricultural world runs completely 100% on oil.
If you cut that off, there's just no alternate energy out here to run these 100 million diesel engines on to do the job.
There's no mules, there's no horses, there's no oxen.
It all in this country runs on oil from production to delivery.
And it's just the alternate energy scam is just most Americans think it's an opinion, Paul.
How do you feel about it?
And the truth is there isn't any.
There's absolutely nothing to run the food production system on.
People need to get that through their head because we absolutely have to win this war to get oil at a reasonable cost and a reasonable price.
I get a kick out of all of the agricultural, and I'm going to say apologists.
I love farmers just like you all love farmers, but nobody has the right to a subsidy, a perpetual subsidy when it comes to a $300 billion farm bill, $10 billion a year for farm subsidies on top of ethanol subsidies.
But they always run their equipment on good old-fashioned oil.
Why don't they run it on ethanol?
Because it doesn't work.
When you put ethanol in your tank, you get about 65% miles per gallon economic efficiency out of it.
So even if you're paying a little less, including the subsidies, when you include those, you're not, you're still not getting the miles per gallon or the energy equivalents, if you will.
All of these alternative fuels don't work.
And it's not just gasoline.
I mean, we're talking about all of the things that petroleum provides for this economy when it comes to plastics, when it comes to ubiquitous.
It really is quite remarkable.
So yes, we run on petroleum.
We run on fossil fuels.
And for this, it started with the global warming jihad.
For the global warmest out there, trying to deny America the right to consume its own energy or the energy that they rightly buy is, in fact, a form of tyranny, plain and simple.
I'm Jason Lewis, in for Rush today on EIB.
Now, look, far be it from me to challenge the veracity of T-Boon Pickens, the billionaire oilman, is running around saying we can't drill our way out of this.
He wants to use wind all up and down the Midwest to replace the natural gas that's used to produce electricity.
According to CNN Money, and what an objective source, apparently the Texas billionaire oil man, is investing hundreds of millions of dollars on a giant wind farm in the Texas panhandle.
His hedge fund, BP Capital, is said to own several stakes or stakes in several companies, I should say, that equip cars to run on natural gas.
The bottom line is he will get richer because the government offers tax credits to all of these.