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March 31, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:26
March 31, 2009, Tuesday, Hour #2
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Hiya, folks, great to have you with us, Rush Limbaugh executing assigned host duties flawlessly with zero mistakes.
It's great to have you here as I, a highly trained broadcast specialist.
Meet and surpass all audience expectations each and every day.
Telephone number if you want to join us, or we're going to get the phone calls, L Quico in this hour.
800-282-2882 at the email address L Rushball at EIBNet.com.
Ed Begley Jr., the noted automobile expert and part-time actor in Hollywood was on Larry King Live last night and said, among other things, look, and it's good we're going to get rid of these big cars and trucks.
We just have to get rid of these SUVs and so forth.
General Motors is in bad shape and Toyota's doing it better, and they got the Prius.
Now, Edus hybrids have become a drag on practically everybody that makes them.
Particularly Toyota.
But that won't be for long because the Obama administration is going to get rid of a bunch of lines that are very profitable at General Motors.
Twenty vehicles they make show a profit.
Eleven of them are cars or are SUVs and trucks.
Now let me ask you people a quick question.
How many of you know what it was that led the automobile industry to invent, quote unquote, the SUV, the sport utility vehicle.
Brian, you got any idea?
None whatsoever.
Don, do you have any idea what it was?
First time I've laughed all day, thank you.
It's a laughed all day.
The SUV was crazy because it looks more masculine than what?
Than a minivan.
No, actually, what led, ladies and gentlemen, to the invention of the SUV was the noted cafe standards.
The uh corporate average fuel economy standards.
Automobile manufacturers have to have their entire fleet meet and average miles per gallon emissions, all that sort of stuff.
However, when the first cafe standards were written by the wizards of SMART in Congress, light trucks and trucks were exempted.
And so the automobile manufacturers, to avoid cafe standards, simply put five seats instead of two on a truck chassis.
And they put a body up there that made it look like it was a car, leading to the sport utility vehicle.
It was exactly how entrepreneurs escape and get around onerous government regulations.
Give you another example of how this happens.
Back in the early 70s, when Richard Nixon was president, and we had what, 3% inflation?
And unemployment was around five or six percent.
Nixon panicked and instituted wage and price controls.
Now these never work.
The way the wage controls do, because you know, management loves to say, hey, I'd love to give you a raise, the government says I can't.
But the way that pr uh preferred employees were given pay increases was to change their compensation from wages to bonuses.
So this is how management took care of itself and its preferred employees.
On the price side, yes, price controls were put into place, so everybody thought they're gonna be able to go to grocery store, and prices were not going to rise.
I think there was a I'm not mistak I'm not quite sure, but I think there was a, you know, an allowable one and a half or whatever inflation rise allowed, but but no direct price increase above the rate of inflation.
And I'm not even sure about that.
So if you'd go to the, let's say you go to the butcher section of your local supermarket, they have various cuts of beef, as you well know.
Well, all of a sudden, all they Had to do was invent a new cut.
Like the quadruple double ribeye.
And they could charge for it whatever they wanted because it was not subject to price controls because it didn't exist when the price controls were put in place.
Wage and price controls never work.
The cafe standards were simply onerous, and the automobile manufacturers found a way around them.
And so the government didn't like that when Barney Frank and his ilk found out they had been outsmarted.
Then the cafe standards eventually began to apply.
And then the the uh PR campaign against the SUV kicked into high gear with the CR club starting in about 1995 or 1997, and we are where we are today.
Where eleven of the 20 most profitable vehicles GM makes are SUVs and trucks.
And the Obama administration says they have got to go.
What's the question, Mr. Snurdley?
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
I know I mentioned this in the first hour.
I I I warn, I remind people of this all the time when I've when the Sierra Club first started targeting the SUV.
I, Carl Pope, that's right, at the Sierra Club, and I I warned you people what was going to happen, where this was going to lead.
And everybody, oh, you're overreacting.
They're just a bunch of environmentalists, and all they do, they just care about the planet Rush.
There's nothing wrong.
They are liberals, and they are going to, if they can, dictate to all of us how we should live.
And we should live the way they say we should.
Now, as for Snerdley and his profound disagreement with my analysis of the G twenty, just before the previous hour ended.
Let me go through this again for you because the drive-by media, both here and across the pond, mostly across the pond, is reporting big troubles for Obama.
Angela Merkel doesn't want any part of a global new deal, and she shut it down, thereby uh thwarting the efforts of the uh Prime Minister of Great Britain, Gordon Brown to have massive worldwide tax increases.
Uh the French president Sarkozy, uh, he's threatening to walk out.
But the British press, the UK press, Financial Times, all of them, have stories of one degree or another that discuss just what a snake pit Obama's stepping into there.
That the in fact they've even got stories he was once popular, but no more.
He doesn't have the aura.
He's not getting off Air Force One with the magical aura that he had when he spoke in Berlin during the campaign.
And I sit there, I look at this stuff, and I I listen to some people, and just it's it's very it's very seductive not to step, not to accept it.
I mean, or to accept it.
I mean, it you because that's what we want to hear.
A lot of people on our side want to hear that the bloom is off the roads when it comes to Obama.
But then common sense sets in, and you realize that world leaders don't go into situations like this without the agenda pretty much being mapped out, the conclusion pretty much being done, and the mission accomplishment statement almost always totally having been written.
Now, there's always the chance that some I mean, you got 20 leaders over there, and half of them are insane, so there's always a chance, and a couple of them will go off the reservation.
So it it's not it's not totally etch and stone, but big meetings like this.
I mean, can you think of a G7 or a G eight in your in your life, where the report at the end of it called it an utter failure, a total disappointment?
I mean, there's no such thing, right?
In fact, you don't even remember.
I'll bet most of you don't remember what came out of any G7 meeting or G8 meeting.
You're living the results of it, but you don't remember what happened to it.
You don't remember what was said, but you're living the tyranny that comes out of these kind of things.
Snurdley disagreed profoundly with me when I said Obama wouldn't even be bothering to go if he wasn't going to come out of this smelling like a rose.
And he started telling me, look, Rush, what you got, you're forgetting.
I mean, the the world economy is in a tank.
It's worse than ours, and they blame America.
You can leave, you can hear it when Angela Merkel talks, you can hear it, when Gordon Brown talks, you can hear it.
When half of the European Union talks, you can hear it.
When Sarkozy talks, when the Russians talk, they're blaming us.
To which I said, and how does that differ from Obama?
One sentence shamed Snurdley into realizing that he too had been seduced by a media reporting stories he wants to be true.
All Obama's got to do over the go over and take the blame.
Not take the blame, agree with them and blame Bush.
All he's got to do is yes, our country has been excessive.
Yes, our country's overstepped its bound.
Yes, our country is tortured.
Yes, our country has exceeded our authority.
Yes, our but it's a new day.
We love Obama.
We love I guarantee, folks, if you think this guy is gonna go over there and be shamed and embarrassed and have his hat handed to him by these people, you've got another thing.
It's gonna be in all likelihood the exact opposite.
He's going to be the world's new hero, and he will accomplish it by agreeing with those who blame the United States for the global meltdown.
Because all he's got to do is say, yeah, you know, I inherited it too.
I'm with you.
We're doing everything we can to fix this.
I think you'll have to agree that my policy is here to take over the automobile, and they're gonna love that.
These guys are gonna love the fact.
Germany doesn't.
Merkel said we don't want anything to do with running the automobile industry in Germany.
Why would they?
The German automobile industry, last I looked, is doing okay.
Anyway, a brief time out here, folks.
We'll be back.
We'll start with your phone calls after this.
Hi, and welcome back, Rush Limbaugh with half my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair.
And as promised to the phones, Fort Myers, Florida, this is Trevor.
Thank you for waiting, sir.
You're next.
Hello, Rush.
I just wanted to say that the president is hired by the people.
We the people elected him.
And for him to start going around and firing civilian CEOs or whomever is just wrong.
I mean, I think he's in the White House because we allow him to be there.
We elected him to be there in the White House.
And my second point is.
You don't want to just type if Trevor if I may interrupt.
Sure.
May I ask your age?
You don't have to I'm fifty-six.
Fifty-six.
Fifty-six.
You sound like you could be in your twenties, which is which is why I asked.
Okay.
What what's your second point?
My second point is I'm on my sixth suburban, and they're great.
I'm planning on buying a Prius, by the way, a black Prius, so that I can have both, and I will decide when I drive the Prius, and I'll decide when I drive the suburban.
And that's real freedom.
Okay, I mean, if you if you if you want to buy a Prius feel free, how many family members you cart around in your SUV?
Um a variety.
I mean, sometimes it's just my wife and myself.
Many times, though, Rush, it's just myself.
All right, so why why are you going to get a Prius?
Well, I'm going to get a Prius because two reasons.
One is the price of gas was four dollars, and I'd like to just save money.
That's nothing wrong with that.
You check the price of a Prius.
Do you you ought to do a cost-benefit analysis and find out how much a Prius costs over a similar car in size and weight with a standard fuel combustion engine that gets just a few miles per gallon less than the Prius.
Find out you're making to be paying thousands of dollars more, and then ask yourself how many years you're gonna have to own the thing to make up the difference.
You need to do that.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
You do.
Now, as we elected the president and he's firing CEOs.
Um, yeah.
We did, and apparently, every damn one of them that voted for him thinks it's a great deal.
In fact, I had the story in the first hour.
Union people in Detroit are very upset.
They think Obama's hitting their industry harder than he hit Wall Street.
And I'm Bob Pisani at CNBC, and I think he's got a point that says, look for some bank CEOs to get fired next.
You know, I I I I it's just it's fascinating to listen to people with the uh the junior high school understanding of civics, you know, 101.
Well, we and I don't mean that as an insult, but please don't misunderstand.
Well, we elect the president, he can't go around firing people.
Oh, yeah, who's to stop him?
Somebody tell me who's gonna stop this.
You know what the chairman of Republican National Committee is out there talking about?
All his partying days.
Steele's out there talking about his his raucous partying days.
On the same day that the president buyers the CEO of General Motors.
Anyway, thanks for the call out there, Trevor.
Knoxville, Tennessee.
Steve, great to have you on the EIB network, sir.
Hello.
Hey, Rush.
How are you today?
Good.
Thank you.
It is uh absolute honor to talk to you.
I'll get straight to my point.
Listen, I I'm blown away at the fact that we're not hearing more uh or for that matter, I don't think I've really heard anything in depth on what I consider to be the fundamental problem in the auto industry, which is the unions.
It it seems that the unions have have grabbed hold of that industry and are bringing it down and doing more damage to it than anything else I can think of.
Well, you're not alone.
I mean, and people have called here and expressed that sediment uh for quite a long period of time.
However, the uh auto companies made these deals with them.
They made the deals on the pensions and the health care until you die, and there are a lot of people at General Motors who are making more in their retirement than ever they ever made when they work there.
But the management made the deals.
Well, i it seems that Obama's willing to have the tough conversation with everybody with the exception of the unions.
Of course, the his payback for the unions.
Of course.
What's good?
The union's gonna end up a significant member uh membership of the Board of Directors of General Motors, probably.
I mean, this is this is giant payback for the unions uh supporting him and the Democrat Party.
There's no question that's what this is.
So doesn't there need to be some sort of uh don't the unions need to give a little bit to help this situation?
Well some some some United Auto workers people are losing their jobs, and the new uh CEO of General Motors fits whatever uh said that they're gonna have to close some plants, more plants.
GM is shutting down plants.
The problem with w when when you get candid General Motors, you still get paid for a while.
Right.
Um but no, I mean the the whole point here is that when it comes to unions, the workers are not going to make any concessions.
The Obama's administration not going to insist on it.
You have to understand this is all done according to a principle Obama believes, and that is his presidency is about returning the nation's wealth to its rightful owners.
And members of unions have been screwed by the likes of Rick Wagner and Lee Iarcoca and all these management people for decades.
The unions are the ones that build the cars.
The unions are the ones that put them together.
The unions are the ones working sweat labor.
They should be getting 20 million dollar retirement package.
That's what guides Obama.
They've been shafted for as long as they've been union members.
They've been shafted for as long as they've been working on the assembly line.
This for Obama and liberalism in general is decades and decades and decades of payback.
And there's nothing to stop it.
You hear any opposition to it anywhere?
I mean, the Hill even has a news story that Obama didn't even consult Congress on, and he just called Carl Levin and his brother Sander Levin, who's a member of Congress and Debbie Stabineau.
And Carl Levin said, ah, this is very sad.
And that was it.
You imagine George W. Bush called Carl Levin, Senator from Bishop.
Hey, we're we're we're firing uh firing Rick uh Rick uh uh Wagner today.
We're taking over the company.
Think all Carr 11 would say, Oh, that's sad.
Laurie in Jacksonville, Florida, Lori is one of my all-time top ten female names.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Thank you, Rush.
Thank you for taking my call.
I um drive a Chevy Corvette, and um I've worked long and hard to be able to afford to do so.
And if we're talking about everybody driving the same sort of car, I don't feel like I should be forced into driving a Prius or a Cobalt or a Focus or anything, you know, of that ilk.
And what really upsets me is I take a lot of heat for the fact that I drive a Corvette.
Who gives you the heat?
Well, other people that feel like they um they feel like I I think I'm better than they are.
Your neighbors, your neighbors?
Um, not so much my neighbors, more people I work with.
Okay, but people in town.
People in general, yeah.
And did they give you grief for driving a Corvette because of the gas hog and you're polluting the planet too?
Uh that as well, but um, you know, I kind of feel like I've paid my fair share if that's you want to be able to do that.
You have been stigmatized, and you have been stigmatized on purpose.
You have been made a target on purpose.
But Rush, when I bought this car, I paid more for it.
I paid their gas or tax or whatever specious name they want to call it.
I pay more for maintenance.
I paid more for gas.
When gas was over four dollars a gallon, I was paying almost five dollars a gallon because I put 93 in my car.
It's all it would take.
So, you know, I feel like I am paying my fair share for my, you know, lack of concern for the global warming.
No, no, you're missing you're missing the point in the era of Obama.
I I unfortunately I'm beginning to understand the era of Obama even more and more every day.
The point the point is that it is not only unfair that you have a vet, it's immoral.
And you shouldn't be allowed, because you can afford this.
It's not fair you can afford all that when others can't.
A little potbelly dictator in North Korea, Kim Jong Il claims they're gonna launch some sort of a missile.
Our intelligence tells us this missile is going to be launched between April 4th and April 8th.
The Japanese are going on alert status, they may fire interceptor missiles at it.
The Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says Japan has every right to defend itself.
Apparently, the North Korean missile can hit Hawaii.
Uh it i i if they aim it right, and if they if it goes where they say it's gonna aim, or where they're going to aim it.
Uh and there's uh controversy over whether it's a dummy, whether it's got some kind of a warhead of some kind on it, whether they say it's just uh exploration uh launch, satellite exploration launch.
Along these lines, the uh the little pot-dellied uh dictator of North Korea, Kim Jong il, asked for a few periods, a few seconds, few moments on this program to address our nation.
And no, a brief but loud communique from the dear leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-il.
Greetings and salutations to the new but badly flawed Obama administration.
Already the thin shoulders of your messiah are buckling under the weight of responsibility to build a socialist people's paradise in his first one hundred days.
Ah, a truly strong president, similar to myself would do this in one day.
No thirty or sixty days for a company to submit to me.
I would just confiscate the wealth and burn the factory to the ground the same day.
And I had such high hopes for you in the beginning.
Oh me, you are weak.
And who is this dragon lady you send to lurk at my door?
Oh, bright.
Whereas the ever sexy Melbright midnight basketball forward in all of North Korea.
Only she can attempt to stop our launch of the new bang pan rocket into space.
With a peaceful satellite greater than even Sputnik.
But before warrant, this new advanced rocket powered by dungas and wood shavings.
Will emit a very large cloud of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere.
Warming your side of the earth in the extreme.
But we will consider delaying our launch if certain gifts are forthcoming.
Such as coal dancing exercise equipment complete with instructions.
Format DVD and correct format DVD.
Unlike what you sent the British Prime Minister.
Then we may also engage in talks.
But under no circumstances will President Obama be allowed to visit our country.
Since the North Korean people already have the one and only Savior Messiah.
Kim Jong il.
That is all.
So a special message for America via the EIB network from Kim Jong Il, the potbellied dictator of North Korea.
By the way, a message to Laurie.
She was in Jacksonville.
Is that where she's Laurie?
I I did I didn't mean to be flip.
I know when people call and talk about this things, the kind of things.
She drives a Corvette and she's being stigmatized.
She's being f people are saying you shouldn't be driving that.
Do you know how much gas thing you're wasting and all this sort of stuff?
She's finally starting to see what the era of Obama is uh is all about.
Uh Lor Laurie, it's not it's not just that it's a gas hog And this sort of thing, as you said, it's that you have it.
And there are people who for years have been stirring up the kind of resentment and envy for people like Yang.
You said you save the money, you paid for it, you pay the gas guzzler tax, you pay for the gasoline.
You were paying five bucks a gallon because you got to use super duper high octane in that engine, and she's still being stigmatized.
I'd drive around in that car a few years if I were you, and I'd have the biggest smile on my face every time I got in it, and let anybody who tells you one thing, don't even argue with them, just smile.
Just smile.
Offer them a ride.
Just smile at them.
Who's next?
This is Matthew, Sacramento, my adopted hometown.
Hello, Matthew.
Wow, honored to talk to you.
Short time liberal, long time conservative.
How's it going?
Great.
Uh what happened to the uh fuel economy of the past.
We used to have economic cars that that were an option.
We don't even have that option now.
The most fuel efficient car beside the hybrid is uh about thirty-five miles per gallon and costs, you know, almost as much as the hybrid in the first place.
Uh what happened to uh like the Geo Metro, 40 miles per gallon, the Honda C R X, about 75 to 90 miles per gallon, depending on how you drove it.
And uh we don't even have that option anymore.
Uh you're asking me you're asking me what happened to the Honda C R X and the G E uh the the uh GE Metro.
GM GM Metro.
Yeah.
Um, you know, I'm just gonna take a flyer here.
Just gonna take a wild guess.
Not enough people bought them.
Well, uh, they're all over the place, and I've got a Geo Metro, and and you might enjoy this.
Uh it gets about 40 miles a gallon, and I have uh friends and a boss, which is a little dangerous territory there, that bought these little smart cars, and they've got a Prius, and uh they paid, you know, twenty-five, thirty thousand dollars for these cars.
I paid a thousand dollars for my Geo Metro, carries more stuff, and gets about the same mile per gallon.
Okay, well then let me try this answer.
You're describing cars here with tremendous gasoline mileage.
Your GO Metro and the uh and the Honda, what is it, the CRX?
CRX, yeah.
What did you say the average are you talking 40 depending on how you drive it?
40 all the way up to 80 miles per gallon in some of the one of these cars?
Is that what you say?
Well, my I I I think I think the answer to your question may lie in the fact that they got too good a gas mileage because they raised the corporate fleet emission standards.
And they cafe standards are put out by the government, and the government says your fleet has to meet these, and when you got a car in your fleet like the CRX or the GEO that just gets is off the charts with good gas mileage, it causes a could cause a problem on the lower end with the SUVs and and some of these others.
Uh so it you you're your culprit may be the uh the cafe standards there again.
And and I kind of kind of thought about it.
I don't know that I've ever seen a GO or a CRX.
They're very tiny.
You might have run one over in uh in uh one of your uh in one of your vehicles.
Likely.
It's true.
Uh how many people can fit how many people can fit in a CRX?
Oh, CRX is worse.
They're uh you can only only fit about uh two people.
They say it's a four-seater, but it's really about a two uh two-person car.
It's not not uh not much bigger than these little smart cars they have or a Tata Nano.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I know okay, I've seen a smart little bubble cars.
There's some people around here take them to grocery store, which doesn't make any sense to me because there's no room for groceries in there, but they still do it because I think people want to be seen.
I mean, even people here want to be seen driving around these little putt-putt things so they can be appreciated as having social conscience.
Uh anyway, uh Matthew, thanks for the uh thanks for the call.
And look, I know there's some of you in this audience that I'll just acknowledge you.
Come on, Rush, tell the truth.
Big oil killed those cars.
Big oil did it.
Too much.
You know there are people who think that.
Here is uh George in Richmond, Virginia.
Hello, Sir, great to have you with us.
Hi, Rush.
I'm a kind of a GM fanatic, and I'm really a Chevy Cobalt fanatic, and I resent the Corvette lady's comments about a cobalt.
A cobalt is really an Opal Astra, which in Europe is a mid-sized car, and it's quite expensive, but they make it cheap in the U.S. and we get a $15,000 cobalt in this country, then I get 40 miles to the gallon with my cobalt.
I've got over 200,000 miles on various cobalt, and I've yet to have one go in the shop with any defect.
A nephew of mine is the general manager of a large Chevrolet dealer in Salt Lake City, Utah, and he says they never have cobalt in the service department.
They're so dependable, so solid, with great German engineering, just as you drive, Rush, but at a bargain price.
Now the cobalt has an XFE model that gets 37 EPA highway, and you can get better than that if you drive sanely.
And a Corvette even will get 25 miles for the gallon with a stick shift.
We can solve our entire oil problem, Rush, if people would just rediscover the clutch.
If all those Camry and the cord drivers would dump the sissy stick transmission and get a stick shift, we would solve our oil problem right there.
But Americans are lazy, you know.
Shut that time.
I've heard everything now.
I love it.
Let me ask you a question.
You love the cobalt.
Why don't more people have them?
Because General Motors and their infinite wisdom made it so cheap in this country that the interior is the grimmest, most ugly interior on any car sold in the United States.
A freaking Daewoo slash Chevy Avio has a better looking interior than the cobalt.
But the basic goodness is still there.
If you want to see what General Motors did to the Cobalt, go to the Saturn Dealer and look at the Saturn Astra, which is the same basic car but made in Europe.
It's a lot nicer.
They they they brought it down to a price, but the basic goodness is there.
Like the Cobalt SF is the best performance car for the money in the country, but it sometimes loses comparison test just on the basis, as car and drivers said, of its chintzy interior.
But here, here the why don't more people have them.
You say it's the interior and they're cheap.
And that's not the answer.
It's not the answer.
And I I don't want to be misunderstood here.
You like your cobalt.
That's fabulous.
You like whatever car any of you have out there, you like it, that's great.
I would never presume to tell you what car you have to drive.
Not in my nature.
The only thing I would say is, you know, don't be an idiot and buy a hybrid because you think you're saving the planet.
If you want a hybrid because you think you're going to save some gasoline and so forth, all well and good, but don't get sucked in by this social do-gooder stuff.
You know, get the car you want.
And the cars and trucks that people want in this country are big.
That is why the G.O. doesn't sell great.
It's why the CRX says it's a limited market.
It's why Priuses have a limited market.
It's why.
Even when gasoline's 250 and three bucks a gallon, people are buying SUVs, large cars and trucks.
They like them.
We are Americans.
We like our automobiles big.
They are safer.
We have families.
They're easily to transport the families around in.
It's just that simple.
But see, now our freedom, our liberty and freedom to have the kinds of car we want is being attacked.
Because we're being told by the central planners, the statist tyranny, uh Cloud and Crowned Washington, that the our choices are wrong.
We're they're not good for the country, not good for the planet, and that we have no right to drive things these days.
We're going to have the size of our automobiles dictated to us.
And the first steps of the, well, actually, first steps of this took place many, many years ago.
We're now getting to the culmination of it.
What with the election of Obama?
Quick timeout.
More straight ahead right after this.
I mentioned this earlier.
Here are the details, and it's from the New York Times.
It's a story about Hummers in Iraq.
Free markets and free people at work in Iraq.
Mission accomplished.
We installed a free market and a free people.
And free people buy what they want.
Iraqis love Hummers because they're a symbol of power, said Mr. Hill.
A chubby 37-year-old who couldn't stop laughing.
Hummers in Baghdad are symbols of much more besides increasing security, returning normalcy, and a yearning for the trappings of sovereignty.
That's what a Hummer represents to Iraqis.
It helped that we didn't have such a bad opinion of the Americans in one of the provinces, said Ali Al Hilly.
People often ask the soldiers to stop their Humvees so they get their pictures taken in front of them.
Soon conditions improved enough to drive all over the city.
Hummer H3s began rumbling off the lot at $50,000 to $60,000 apiece in dollars and all the money down fully loaded.
No one wanted them any other way.
No Iraqis wanted a bargain basement Hummer.
They wanted them fully loaded.
Iraqis are currently paying historically high prices for gasoline.
At a dollar forty a gallon, that wouldn't break any Americans' hearts.
But not long ago in Iraq, it was 19 cents a gallon.
It's now a buck forty.
The increase had no effect on sales of Hummers.
If you can afford this car, you don't care how much gasoline costs, said Mr. Hilly.
Iraqis love their cars.
In Iraq, people judge you by your car.
And you're not a man without one.
When it comes to Hummers, they'll always nearly be bigger than anybody else's car.
Now I have another story here out of St. Louis.
Chesterfield, Missouri, near St. Louis.
And it is well, just the New York Times as well.
I think.
A dealer's big bet is on the line as Hummer falls from favor.
And remember, you just heard about the Hummer.
Iraqis love it.
And they're buying them as fast as they can at full price and fully loaded.
In a nation that is just emerging from the seventh century, thanks to us.
And the people over there are buying Hummers and they're excited.
And here in the world's greatest superpower, the greatest outpost for freedom ever in the world, The same automobile is being tarred, feathered, and destroyed by the Obama administration and the American left.
In 2005, Jim Lynch placed a big bet on a big vehicle.
He was already a successful Hummer dealer, but he spent $7.5 million on a new 34,000 square foot showroom in Chesterfield, suburb of St. Louis.
Says here wealthy suburb.
He even turned 60 acres of Missouri River floodplain into a rough terrain test track with visions of people coming afar to try and buy a Hummer.
General Motors cheered him on, he says, telling him he could eventually sell as many as 1,300 Hummers a year, which started more than $30,000, and if you get them fully loaded here, you can spend up to a hundred grand, not to mention the thousands that many owners spend on accessories.
He sold seventy new Hummers a month when he opened the store, but now sees only a handful of customers every month.
And that didn't even pay the interest in my inventory, he said.
Now I'm lying awake at night trying to think of what I can do with this big beautiful building.
Sales of Hummers overall have fallen so far, 51% last year, the worst drop in the industry, that General Motors is trying to find a buyer for the brand.
Without one, the company might close Hummer.
An announcement about Hummer's fate may be made today, in fact.
For Mr. Lynch and the 379 other Hummer dealers worldwide, however, it'd be a sudden end to a brand that once seemed to have a strong future.
Among its staunchest, staunchest advocates was Bob Lutz.
GM's product development chief, who is retiring this year.
Shortly after joining GM in 2001, Lutz envisioned Hummer as a global brand that could challenge the rugged image of off-road supremacy of Chrysler's Jeep products.
I think Hummer has a lot more potential.
Even GM knows, Lutz said at the time.
It stands for something.
That's what people want.
But what Lutz didn't know is that this country would elect a president who looks at a Hummer and says that's not what I want for anybody but me.
There was a lot of reason for optimism within the anyway.
Hummer about to go out of business in the United States.
They can't get enough of them in Iraq.
Now something's not right about this.
Henry Waxman's just about finished his global warming energy bill, 648 pages.
As the Democrats prepare to finish off what's left of the United States.
We'll be back.
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