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Nov. 19, 2008 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:27
November 19, 2008, Wednesday, Hour #2
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The views expressed by the host on this show make more sense than anything anybody else out there happens to be saying because the views expressed by the host of this program are the result of a daily relentless, unstoppable pursuit of the truth.
By the way, the latest opinion audit is in.
We have an official opinion auditing firm in Sacramento, California, the Sullivan Group, still documented to be almost always right 98.8% of the time to move.
Well, but we're now we're held steady.
I mean, once you're at 98.8, I mean, even move it to 98.9, you've got to be a hundred percent right in your opinions for like six months.
It's gonna be, you know, it's a it doesn't take much to fall off from 98.8, but I mean to move up from it uh is uh it's gonna take an incredible feat.
Telephone number if you want to be on the program today, 800-282-2882, and the uh email address is L Rushbow at EIBNet.com.
Now, a special note to those of you watching on the Ditto Cam today at rushlimbaugh.com, rush 247.
You may notice some uh lighting changes from the first hour to this hour.
That is because we have had to defer to the lighting requirements of uh ABC.
They are here today with a film crew doing what is called B-roll.
Uh this afternoon I have an interview with Barbara Walters at a secret undisclosed location for her top ten most fascinating people in the country.
Is it the country or the world?
The world.
Ten most fascinating people in the world for 2008, and it airs on March or uh uh December 4th, right after Gray's Anatomy.
If I got that right, so and uh whenever people have seen the wire reports placing me in the top ten, they're as mystified as I am as as to how it happened.
Uh but uh I don't know who number one is, they never tell you who number one is.
But the uh the ABC crew will be here for about the well, the first segment here, and uh that that's why I appear to be sort of like the moon, half in shadow and half uh half bright.
Facial moon.
Facial moon.
800-282-2882, if you want to be on the program.
Now, if you were if you if you miss the first hour, Chuck Hagel, the disgraced and retiring so-called Republican Senator from Nebraska, went to Johns Hopkins University to do a seminar to the uh enlightened students there on American politics, and he basically did a big cry session because he was criticized by me.
He said if the leader of the conservative movement, he said if he just let Limbaugh run for office if it's so easy.
Limbaugh does nothing but tear people down, let limbaugh run for office.
Senator Hagel, as I have said countless times, I will not endure the pay cut to uh run for office.
You want to try doing talk radio, Senator, if you think handling criticism is such a tough thing.
What are you people in Washington above it for some reason?
When you go join the Democrats more often than your own party, what do you expect to happen to you?
Which gets me to the point.
Okay, so we've lost a couple of elections now.
We lost the uh the midterms in 06, and I say we advisedly, the Republicans lost.
I have conservative first and Republican second.
And of course we lost the presidential election uh earlier this month.
So that's two elections, and now, of course, here come all the people who have our best interests at heart.
Why Chuck Hagel, Republican in name only?
Why E.J. Dion Jr., drive by media columnist.
All these liberals are telling us that what we need to do to win elections is become more like them.
That we gotta go for global warming, that we have to understand and we gotta get rid of our social conservatives and understand that abortions are gonna happen, and we have to defend it.
If we do this, we can win elections.
And I'm mystified by this because these people do not care that we win elections.
They are opposed to our winning elections.
So here they are advising us, and we even have some of the old our brilliant uh pseudo-intellectual conservative intelligentsia in in our own media saying that we need to moderate, and we got the campaign they wanted.
We got the candidate they wanted, we got the campaign they wanted, we got a guy who was reaching out to Hispanics, we got a guy reaching out to moderates, reaching out to Democrats, reaching out to independents, and he lost in all those sectors.
And of course, the Republicans try to lay the blame here now on Sarah Palin, but that won't fly.
She was the only thing that energized the Republican campaign.
Everybody knows it.
Everybody, both parties know it, which is why they're trying to uh dump on her and make it look like she was the one who was ineffective.
But here's the point.
Here's the point after this admittedly uh brilliant setup.
The point is we won two huge landslides.
You'll remember this, Katie.
We won two huge landslides in 1980 and 1984.
We did it with Ronaldus Magnus.
I mean, it wasn't even close to your 49 state landslides.
Now, I don't remember, and then let's talk 2000.
Well, let's blow that out because that was the Democrats think that we stole that.
Let's go to 2004 with the haughty John Kerry.
Back 2002 as well.
2002, after the Wellstone Memorial, the exit polls in 2002 said the Democrats didn't retake the Congress because they were wrong on values.
They had to go out and court values voters, which is the social conservatives.
Uh, as far as Democrats are concerned, you hayseed hicks that live in the South and the Southeast.
And so for a week or so there was lip service.
Yeah, we gotta we gotta shore up our uh relationship here with the all God crowd.
We gotta shore up our relationship here with religious people.
But if it was just lip service, they didn't, of course, do anything because it's uh their constituencies that comprise the Democrat Party would uh not stand for it for very long.
So even after 2004, so we got 80, 84, 2004 with the haughty John Kerry who uh served in Vietnam.
The same thing the Democrats started saying that uh it was it was uh slick marketing and packaging that was responsible, it was not issues.
I don't remember when we wiped the floor with the libs.
I do not remember the libs rejecting their theories and their ideas and their policies.
I didn't see them reevaluate who they are.
I didn't see them say the era of FDR is over.
I didn't hear them say or do, you know, we've got to change who we are, we've got to go out and try to attract those Southern conservatives.
We have to go out and try to attract those probes.
They don't do that.
The left never waters themselves down, they don't water down liberalism, they don't say the era of FDR is over.
All of a sudden, when we lose, we're supposed to do that.
We're supposed to throw away everything we believe in, we're supposed to toss aside every conservative principle we believe in because the Republicans lost conservatism did not lose, except when it wasn't on the ballot.
When conservatism, traditional American values and institutions were on the ballot, Prop 8, can you believe in California?
The whole concept of marriage being something other than between a man and a woman was defeated.
How can that be?
If this country has moved so far left, if this country is such now anti-tradition, anti-conservative.
In California, how can a ballot initiative that defines marriage as that between a man and a woman only?
How can it win big?
If this country's gone so far left.
The Mormons did it, of course the Mormons did it, and the blacks did it.
The Mormons did the blacks did it, yeah.
70% of the blacks who voted in California voted for Prop 8 to keep marriage defined as that between a man and a woman.
So my my point is the left never start saying they have to change who they are, they have to water down what they believe in.
They just chalk it up to the stupidity of American people.
When they lose, they tell American people are stupid.
Or Rush Limbaugh did something to poison the minds of the American people.
But they just chalk it up the American people who are dumb and stupid, got tricked by slick conservative marketing and packaging.
It was events and circumstances that are beyond their control.
It was never their failures.
Now, their guy, Barack Obama, gets 52% of the vote.
We conservatives are supposed to drop everything we believe.
We're supposed to drop who we are.
Not only will that not happen, it can't happen because conservatives are believers.
We're not policy wonks.
We don't form our beliefs based on where should we be on this policy?
And where should we be on this policy?
And how should we approach that group?
And how should we approach this group?
We don't do that because our policies and core beliefs deal with everybody.
Our policies and core beliefs lift everybody.
This is a nation founded on the concept of individual liberty and freedom.
You give as much of that to everybody.
And it's been shown, it's been proven to work, 80 and 84.
The problem is there are too many people in government, both parties who are frightened by too much individual liberty on the part of the American people.
We believe in our principles, and that's why the E.J. Dion Juniors of the world and the Chuck Hagels of the world, David Brooks, the Frums, all the rest of them don't get it and never will.
And this is why they don't matter to conservatives and never will.
And they think they're going to help redefine conservatism, but you can't.
Conservatism is what it is.
The era of Reagan is not over.
Well, Rush Reagan's agenda, whole different set of matters.
Doesn't matter what the agenda is, conservatism applied to it works.
I can't tell you how many times people have uh have said to me, you know, you don't you don't sound rushed, and these are friends of mine, but you know you don't sound like you're uh deferential enough to the historical consequences and nature of Obama's victory.
What do you mean?
Well, it's the first black president.
I mean, this is a seminal moment.
This is a huge look at what we've overcome.
I said, I got past that the second day after the election.
What do you mean?
You got because I don't care what Obama's skin color is.
I don't care what anybody's skin color is.
I'm speaking now, by the way, as a conservative and as an American, I don't care what anybody I when I look at a group of people I see Americans.
I don't see, oh, there's some blacks, we gotta do what we can to make them like us.
And oh, there's some women in there, we're gonna do what we can make them like us.
And look, there's some Hispanics.
Oh, we better not insult them.
We gotta make them I don't see people like that.
I see people as human beings with all kinds of potential, depending on their own ambition and desire uh and and willingness to work hard, do whatever it is to realize their dreams.
So, yeah, Obama's the first black president, yeah, it happened and so forth, but now that doesn't give him a pass as far as what his ideas are.
And if his ideas are bad, if he gets into office and starts doing things that I think are damaging the country, I'm gonna say so.
I'm not gonna be afraid to do so on the basis that he's black, the first black president.
I mean, that's we gotta get rid of this identity politics.
We have to get rid of all of this group and victim uh victimization politics and realize that we're all human beings and that we're all Americans.
This hyphenated stuff just doesn't work, and that's what conservatism is.
And I find it fascinating.
All these all these pseudo-conservatives who want to now start looking at people the way liberals do.
Female Americans, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Walmart Americans, NASCAR dads, soccer moms.
I mean, why do we have to uh segregate a country this way in order to progress?
Because it doesn't cause progress at all.
It just creates unnecessary animosities and uh and rivalries.
So I'm not gonna listen to the Hegels, and I'm not gonna listen to all of these on our side who claim that the era of Reaganism or conservatism is over, that we need to adapt to the modern uh era and understand what it is.
But it basically we need our own version of big government too.
We just need to do it smarter and better, passing out the goodies to the right people.
And that's a recipe.
You may as well just join the Democrat Party and have that argument with them.
Because there's no room on the rights for that kind of argument to make government the central theme of people's lives.
Just uh I know if there's no argument.
There's no argument on conservatism about what it is.
There's a concern, there's an argument among pseudo-conservatives about what conservatism ought to become.
And anyway, I gotta take a quick time out here, my friends.
We'll be back.
We'll continue.
Again, your phone calls at 800-282-2882 right after this.
Okay, people have been patiently waiting.
By the way, Ted Kennedy has asked Mrs. Clinton to head up the Senate health care team, and this is also causing a dilemma for Mrs. Clinton uh regarding the acceptance of the offer from uh President select Obama uh to be uh Secretary of State.
So this cabinet business is just it's the Clinton team.
It's a Clinton administration headed up by Barack Obama.
Back to the phones we go.
This is Brian in Philadelphia.
And it's great to have you here, Brian.
Welcome.
Thank you, Rod.
Nice talking to you.
You bet, sir.
Uh well, we have a uh a new group in Philadelphia of um people who need bailed out, and uh didn't know if you heard about it, but it's the uh students and graduate students with student loans who feel that uh when these banks and Spannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been bailed out that they deserve the same, that they have to pay back their loans uh immediately and uh without any conditions.
Can you blame them?
No, actually I can't do that.
I mean, if we're gonna if we're if we're if we're gonna bail out people who can't pay their mortgages, although that appears to be off the table now.
We've I don't know what we're doing with that.
This whole bailout thing is turned into the auto companies.
And that's gonna happen.
Obama's gonna do this.
Uh if it doesn't happen before this lame duck session is over, Obama will do it.
So they're gonna get bailouts.
Can you can you blame students wanting to be bailed out on their student loans?
Can you blame anybody for calling Washington, hey, what about me?
No, absolutely not.
I don't know, I don't say where it would end, though.
Well, I'll tell you where it is.
It ends up in four years.
It it ends with the government in charge of everything they can be in charge of.
Now, Barney Frank said yesterday when asked the same question, where does it end?
He said, Well, it ends when it stops working.
The bailouts end when they stop working.
Somebody tell me when they work.
Right.
When did when that would be news?
When was the last bailout that worked?
I don't know if one.
Chrysler?
Yeah, but that was a loan and they paid it back.
That was a loan, and they remember that that was Lee Irococo's uh big big claim to fame here.
That they paid back the loans.
That ended up not being a bailout.
You bail out the student loans, the students are basically saying, forgive the loans.
But my point, how can you blame this?
Was predictable, this was going to happen.
The minute the government starts bailing out Wall Street, the minute government starts bailing out banks, when they start bailing out the auto industry, it's it isn't gonna be long before I mean you get you start giving away money and you're gonna create a long line for it.
And I I'm not so sure that uh some of this just isn't by design.
Uh, because none of this nobody with a brain would be doing what they're doing.
Nobody understood the consequences of be doing what they're doing unless they have a different objective than what is stated.
Frank in Gilbert, Arizona, your next on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Great to have you here, sir.
Rush, I love you, man.
I just wanted to make a quick point.
Um we do you're right.
We do not need to reach out to the Hispanic community.
I'm just gonna pinpoint them because my mom is Brazilian, so she listens to two stations on TV, you know, Univision and Telemundo.
But you're right.
We don't have to reach out for them simply because the two biggest points, gay marriage, they're against abortion, they're against.
But in the next four years, Rush, if we don't come out with a Fox Spanish network to inform, not doctrinate.
My mom is has been indoctrinated and duked by those stations for years.
That's the reason she voted for Obama.
She actually said to me, I'm voting for Obama because the Democrats are for poor people and the Republicans are for the rich.
If we we have only have four years left, I am so right now.
Let me tell you something.
How old are how old are you?
I am 39.
39.
Well, I'm I'm about 18 years older than you are, Frank.
And my whole life I have heard that the Democrats are for the guy, a little guy and the poor, and the Republicans are for the rich.
And that's that that is a derivative of the New Deal and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and 50 years or more of media promoting the whole concept.
It's of course flat out false now, but it people think it, and and uh particularly the way they grow up.
We could do a Spanish version of Fox.
I don't I don't know who's gonna do it.
I'm I if anybody would.
But I don't know that that's the way to go about this.
I mean I wouldn't oppose it, don't don't misunderstand.
I just don't know about the likelihood of it.
But then the the you you you get down to this point.
You say the uh bunch of Hispanics are opposed to abortion and they're opposed to um uh what are the other thing that you said.
Obama got the majority of the Catholic vote.
And he Obama's for infanticide.
Obama's for partial birth abortion.
And he got over half the Catholic vote.
And the Catholic votes not all watching Spanish language television.
So I I there there's more at work here than than saying you gotta go you get the Hispanics because they oppose abortion and they oppose um uh again, I forgot what the other game Gary meant gay marriage.
Um the the party that's for gay marriage was supported two to one by Hispanics.
The party that is for abortion was supported two to one by Hispanics.
And 52% of the Catholic vote votes for Obama.
Now you can come up with your own explanation.
I I have my explanation for this.
I just I think whether you do it in English, whether you do it in Spanish, the population of the uh Hispanics watching Telemo maybe such that you might have to do some of this in Spanish.
I just don't think that we've had anybody in our party unabashedly proudly articulately run a conservative campaign or even govern that way.
And that's what's going to turn all this around.
It's really not complicated, and it's really rather simple.
What's hard is convincing somebody to stick with it.
They can't handle the criticism.
Mr. Snertley tells me we're being inundated with people who want to talk about the auto bailout, and we'll get that will do that.
That's that's cool, in fact.
And we'll uh we'll start on your phone calls out here in just a second.
I want to go back to yesterday, though, for some testimony from a couple of CEOs, Alan Malley of uh Ford, CEO there, Rick Wagoner, the CEO of General Motors, first Millale, and this is a portion of his remarks.
We suggest the loans be structured in a revolving format so exposure to the taxpayer would be limited.
And if used, we would repay them, of course, with interest.
We offer are hopeful that we have enough liquidity, but we also must prepare ourselves for the prospect of further deteriorating economic conditions in 2009.
In addition, the collapse of one of our competitors would have a severe impact on Ford and our transformation plan, because the domestic auto industry is highly interdependent.
To hear that, the uh collapse of one of their competitors would have a severe impact on Ford and their transformation plan.
Now that's fascinating.
And if I'm in the I mean, I'm me, I'm just this I'm a neophyte here at this kind of stuff, but my competitors go out of business.
I happen to love it.
In fact, I'm trying to drive them out of business.
I mean, I thought that was the point.
But that's just me.
That's just me.
Here is Rick Wagoner, CEO, General Motors.
What exposes us to failure now is not our product lineup, is not our business plan, is not our employees and their willingness to work hard, is not our long-term strategy.
What exposes us to failure now is the global financial crisis, which has severely restricted credit availability and reduced industry sales to the lowest per capita level since World War II.
What would it mean if the domestic industry were allowed to fail?
The cost would be catastrophic.
And jobs lost, income lost, government tax revenue lost, and a huge blow to consumer and business confidence.
The key there is government tax revenue loss.
That's what members on Capitol Hill heard when, oh, oh, government will lose tax revenue.
We're going to afford tax revenue.
Everybody exists to provide taxes for some revenue here in Washington.
You know what nobody's talking about?
I'm fascinated here by by by Rick Wagoner uh laying out what their problem is.
And it's not the business plan, it's not employees, not their willingness to work hard.
And by the way, uh uh uh uh full disclosure, General Motors is a sponsor in good standing of this program, and we're having a phenomenal uh relationship with them, and our advertising is working for General Motors.
If they'd been with us for years and years and years, they wouldn't be in this situation.
But uh they've only been with us for a year and a half.
So at any rate, CEO Rick Wagoner says it's not the employees, it's not the business plan, it's not our long-term strategy.
What exposes us to failure is the global financial crisis, which has severely restricted credit availability and reduced industry sales to the lowest per capita level since World War II.
You know what nobody is mentioning here in all of this is oil.
I think people have forgotten because now you can you can find you can find gasoline at under two bucks a gallon in certain pockets of the fruited plane.
Sir is in New Jersey.
In Florida, you're still over three bucks in some places.
That's because I live there and they know I live there and whatever.
But the gasoline's coming down, but it was at four bucks.
That was the that was the tipping point.
Would you look at what happened when gasoline hit four bucks, and it was just for a month that it was there?
We stuck people started worrying about what they could.
We got stories about people can't eat.
We had follow-up stories about ethanol causing all kinds of food shortages related to corn and so forth.
It was a month of sheer disaster.
And not much of it was wrong.
I mean, four dollar a gallon gasoline as quickly as it rose was a shock to this country in ways we haven't been shocked, and it shut people down.
And among other things.
Remember how people started making mad dashes to get rid of their SUVs?
Do you remember the story?
The multiple stories, the end of the SUV, funeral for the SUV.
Look at how reactionary everybody is got to four bucks a gallon, and everybody thought it was going to keep going up.
And so they tried to get rid of the SUVs.
They were trying to move into smaller cars.
Some could, some couldn't.
They were not going to eat as much.
They're going out to eat.
They weren't going to movies as much.
There was sheer anger and panic over this.
And I'll lay you a dollar to a donut that that's had as much an impact on people buying new cars as anything in the global financial market or the credit crunch.
Because I will wager that you can still go and buy a car today.
And I'll bet you you can get it financed.
I will bet you that dealerships are still open.
And I will bet you that you can get a traditional loan or financing for a car.
I'll bet you don't have to put 50% down.
I'll bet you don't, I bet you can still go out and get zero financing in some place.
I bet you can do it.
I'll bet in some places you can get the employee discount.
Okay, Rush, so how come auto sales haven't picked up if gasoline and oil have come down?
Because once it got to four bucks as fast as it did, people aren't taking any chances.
Nobody understands how any of this happened.
Most people think everything but the market was involved here.
How do you go from an average oil price of 9200 bucks to 150 in six weeks?
And then have it stay there for 30 days and then back down to where it's now under 55.
How does this happen?
People may not know how it happens, but they know it ain't the market.
It ain't solely and strictly the market.
So once the price of gasoline got up there to four bucks, stick with me on this, folks.
Once the price of gasoline got up there to four bucks, I don't care.
And I everybody knew the market could not sustain that for long.
The market could not sustain $150 barrel in oil.
And they were talking back then about how it was going to go to 200 barrels and oil dollars barrel.
And nobody, nobody expected the market to be able to sustain.
The airline business would have to ground airplanes, even more than they did.
And look what they did do that, by the way.
Look at all of the drastic, I mean drastic overnight moves that businesses and people made.
Once oil hit 150 bucks, jet fuel hit whatever it was costing, depend where you buy it, and gasoline was four bucks.
Now oil's 55, gas is under two bucks.
But there's not a mad dash to go buy cars.
There's not a mad dash to resume lifestyles that existed prior to this massive increase to four bucks.
And that's because...
everybody instinctively doesn't trust this price drop.
Because they don't understand what caused it to skyrocket in the first place.
I mean, market forces were largely in play, but but people it's still that that kind of volatility has not been seen before in most people's lifetimes.
That kind of instability, that erraticism, the market generally doesn't allow that to happen, both up and down.
So what we need to do, the best thing we could do for the oil or for the auto industry, without getting into the debate of bailing them out or letting them go bankrupt, because they're gonna get bailed out.
Obama's gonna do it.
If this Congress doesn't, Obama will do it.
It will happen, it'll be a payoff to the unions, it'll be a payoff to Geneva Grandholm, the state of Michigan.
It's going to happen.
And it'll be a bailout of the unions, it will not be a bailout of the big three automakers.
That's that's why it's going to happen.
So I don't even want to debate that.
But if you want, if you want stability in the automobile industry and every other stability, then we have to continue doing what was a conservative talking point during the election, and that is drill here and drill now.
We have got to, as a nation, develop and increase our own independent sources of fossil fuels.
Because there isn't any alternative.
I don't care what the President Select tells you is going to happen in the next 10 years.
There's no alternative to run in your car.
They may have been a part of the show.
The Chevy Vault, the electric car, but even if it's a big hit, they're not going to be able to produce enough of them fast enough for everybody to get it and it wants to be.
And there's going to be a line of people to get these things.
Oil is the fuel of the engine of freedom, and it will be for the foreseeable number of decades.
We need our own supply.
We need not forget.
My point is this simply because gasoline's down to two bucks now, or on its way there in a lot of places, and the oil price is back down to, and they, by the way, the OPEC gang is now saying oil's going to go to 40.
See that today?
Oil price may go to 40 or below.
Now you you might be so, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Oh, right, all right, I'll refining dandy, but I'm telling you, the people well, go ahead and celebrate all you want.
I'm just telling you the people in the oil business are going to be in the same, they're not going to ask for bailouts, but they're going to be in the same circumstance.
Everybody else is how can we do business?
How can we make commitments to find more oil?
How can we make commitments to drill more oil when the price is this volatile?
You know, we were talking about shale oil in Colorado and other places and the Bachenfield.
Well, guess what?
All of a sudden at 55 and 40 bucks, can't go get it.
Doesn't cost enough.
There's that doesn't, they're not, they're not their record profits are not going to be invested in losses.
The record oil company may have had record profits, but they're not going to invest it in losses.
And they have said so when they came up to Washington and testified.
They said so.
And they pretty much pointed out look at forget the oil companies.
I'm just talking about, as consumers and as a country and for the auto business.
I am just saying I am convinced that whatever you want to chalk up in a global financial crisis, which is basically houses, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Democrat Party is basically that.
If that's led to a global financial crisis, so be it.
But I maintain that it was gasoline shooting up to four bucks that caused the most damage to the automakers.
They were already having trouble at the same time, but look at how their sales plummeted when that happened.
Look at their sales figures for the for the quarter in which gasoline hit four bucks.
And just because it's now down to two, that doesn't mean people are going to pretend that the four dollars never happened.
They're going to be more guarded since they see how rapidly it can climb.
So, bottom line, again, to make a long story short, I'm sorry for the uh diarrhea of the mouth here.
But the best thing we could do for the domestic auto business is to ramp up the domestic oil business.
We'll be back after this day with them.
And we are back.
Great to have you with us, L. Rush Baldy, excellence in broadcasting.
Now, one more thing here about this oil business.
Now, I know what I said.
Um it makes sense.
Here's the problem with it, though.
No matter what happens, whether the news is bad or whether the news is good, we are going to have a leftist dominated government.
A leftist dominated government exists to tax things.
So when the oil price goes down to where it is, 5755, whatever it is, and if it goes down to 40, let's say gasoline goes below two bucks everywhere across the country.
Do you know what the left is going to do?
Raise taxes on it.
And it raised taxes under the under what concept and what precept?
Well, we can't have people return to their old bad habits.
We can't return to this profligate use.
It'll destroy the climate, it'll destroy the planet.
In fact, the Washington Post in an editorial on Sunday called Raise the Gas Tax.
Let me read to you here, ladies and gentlemen, the salient uh paragraph.
In a perfect world, we would like to see a gas tax that was the equivalent of oil at 100 per barrel.
This would send a loud and clear signal to drivers to continue eschewing gas guzzlers.
Now, Mr. Snerdley says that not everybody did know the price of gasoline and oil would come down, that I was one of the few that predicted it.
Okay, it's come down.
I don't care how many people knew it was going to come down or not.
The point is it's come down, but people don't trust it's going to stay down.
So I don't think people are gonna it's gonna have to it's gonna have to stay down for quite a while before people resume their old habits.
But they're not going to have the money to resume their old habits.
Because by the time it would take for confidence to settle in, new tax increases are coming down the pike.
And I guarantee you, the left will see these lower oil prices and they'll see an opportunity for higher taxes.
And they'll see an opportunity for higher taxes on gasoline as well.
What?
What?
Right, that when prices go back up, they're not going to take the taxes off of them.
If the Washington Post, which will have an ear in the Obama administration, if the Washington Post is advocating that taxes be raised so that people are paying the equivalent of a hundred dollars per barrel of uh of oil.
Well, what was the price of gasoline at a hundred bucks a barrel?
Probably around 350.
So they want, they want the Washington Post and the left is advocating a constant price of $3.50 for uh for for a gallon of gasoline.
National average.
So then you do that.
Price is gonna go up again on oil.
As the global financial crisis eases, and people begin to invest and relive and uh start start taking more risk and so forth.
It's gonna get it is gonna go back up again.
They will lower the uh the take advantage of the lower oil price to raise taxes, raise revenue, make expensive alternates uh supposedly less expensive.
It's just so much opportunity out here, and all of it is just waiting to be taxed by people who live to tax you.
Here's Cheryl in Columbus, Ohio.
Cheryl, I'm I'm glad you waited.
Welcome to the EIB network.
Hi, Rush.
I've listened to you for almost 18 years, so I almost consider you like an old friend, and yet I'm so nervous, you'd think I'd be a little calmer talking to an old friend.
Well, you sound not nervous at all.
Hey, uh, I just wanted to uh with you.
I was watching C-SPAN yesterday, the uh Senate hearings, and there was this professor uh from a Maryland university who was testifying why the uh the government shouldn't give the automakers their bridge loan.
Yeah.
But I was so struck by his hypocrisy.
Because first of all, Tenure is better than any union.
And then uh second of all, he was talking about how the automakers' uh expenses were making them uncompetitive.
But has anyone checked how college tuition has gone up?
I mean, it's something like 400% over a certain period of years.
Yeah, and you know, you know what's interesting about that?
We never hear the left take their rips at big education.
Big education can raise their tuition, can raise every expense they've got.
They can go out and collect all these donations called endowments from all of these rich egomaniacs who just want their name on the next building at Harvard or wherever.
Tuition can skyrocket an increase in multiple percentages.
And all we'll ever hear from the left is we've got to find a way to make sure everybody can afford to go to college, but it never involves ripping big education to lower their tuition.
There's a reason for this.
Big education is a bunch of libs.
Big education pays themselves lots of money off of high tuition, endowments and so forth.
And big education, big government, they are identical people.
Same thing.
Even CNN saying it now, big oil's decision to hold off on new production now seems rather wise.
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