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Feb. 15, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:54
February 15, 2011, Tuesday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of The Rush 24-7 Podcast.
And he said it, folks.
He actually said that oil is the energy of the past.
We are in big, big trouble if this guy, well, not if he believes it, we know he believes it.
He's got a seven-year oil drilling moratorium in the eastern Gulf of Mexico.
And we've got the story from last December to prove it.
A seven-year moratorium.
He is the one making oil.
The uh energy of the past, with his people in the Middle East, who knows what how that bodes for a future oil production.
Anyway.
Hi, folks, how are you?
It's Rush Limboy, and we're back.
Twenty-one hours after we told you we'd be back.
We're back.
The uh telephone number 800-282-2882 and the email address L Rushmall at EIB net.com.
Well, the president just finished amazingly on time.
What do you make of this, snurdly?
A press conference before the program starts, started right at 11 o'clock straight up, and it ended right at 12 noon straight up.
No.
Uh well, I I don't think so.
Snerdley says he wanted to get out of there.
I think he's tired of the questions.
I don't think so at all.
I think that uh by holding his press conference now, Obama was able to dilute the number of budget questions with questions on Egypt.
You know, there were a lot of questions on Egypt in there in this press conference that diluted uh any more time that could have been spent on the budget.
There was there were serious questions on the budget as well, but I think he's pretty happy with himself.
I I think he did this press conference, wanting it to be talked about on this program and others, of course, uh ending it at 12 noon rather than doing it after three o'clock or in the middle of the program.
I think I think I guess feeling his oats.
I think he feels pretty, I think I think he's pretty happy about what was said, and listening to some of the instant analysis from the state controlled media afterwards, he's got every reason.
They're praising this guy to the hilt.
Uh over this press conference.
We have our own sound bites from it, uh, we will analyze and we'll also give you some information uh about Egypt.
It continues to unfold, and Iran.
And now Zavigniev Bzhezinski say, well, this is the wrong time for freedom in Iran.
We we don't want to go there now.
Providing cover for the uh for the regime.
But I I think I think um in truth, one of the one of the reasons for this press conference was to try to cover up obscure uh deflect what have you uh the incompetence in foreign affairs with his incompetence in economics.
As we had incompetence on display, whatever the subject matter, but he was able to filibuster on Egypt and the Middle East and uh and deflect with calm tones and bipartisan head fakes on the uh on the budget.
I mean, it might be a smart political move to diffuse the universal rage about his abdication of leadership on the uh on the budget.
He says oil is the energy source of the past.
Yeah, when you shut down drilling, when you are responsible for seven-year drilling moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico.
The question is, if if oil is the energy source of the past, what is today's energy source?
You know, I I notice an unbig aviation buff, folks, and I noticed that uh Boeing uh just uh just announced a stretch version of the 747.
It's a longest jet in America, well, longest jet in the world, it's not the biggest capacity, the A380, the Airbus still holds more passengers, but the hump on the new 747, I mean, it's a now why would somebody why would somebody be expanding their line of jet aircraft if oil is the energy source of the past.
All kinds of manufacturers are introducing new jets to the market, and what do they require?
You know, if I that's one of the things I always look at when I when I balance news reports about finite oil supply.
We're gonna be running out soon.
We better get going on the windmills in the sun.
Well, the people who are in business and investing a lot of money, hoping for a return, are investing in products that use a lot of oil.
And its refined derivatives, such as kerosene, jet fuel, uh general dynamics making a new business jet, the Gulfstream 650, the G650.
By the way, get this.
They just had a test flight of that mama.
That thing rolls off the assembly line, the first one in 2012.
They've got five or six of them flying around up there doing test flights.
They just had a test flight from Long Beach, I think, to Savannah, Georgia, coast to coast, left to right, and they obviously had tailwind.
They did that flight in three hours and thirty minutes.
They got near the speed of sound with some new efficient engine, the the Gulfstream G650.
Oh, yeah, jet fuel, much, much more expensive than uh gasoline.
Much more.
Um traditionally it is uh, you know, five or six bucks a gallon now versus uh three, something like that for all but the point is if you manufacture a product that gulps the stuff, and we're running out of the stuff, and if the stuff is the energy source of the past, why are you building new airplanes?
Why are you designing new engines that use the stuff?
Why are people pouring money into these?
It's not the energy source of the past, but this guy wants to make it that.
Why?
What what what in the world?
This is this is this is petulance.
It is classic, uninformed, incompetent left wing stupidity, that oil is the great polluter of the world, that oil is this.
I mean, it's oil, the free flow of oil at market prices is the fuel of freedom.
It's the fuel of the engine of freedom for crying out that we got a guy here undermining it.
I don't care.
I don't care if he's doing it on purpose.
I and by the way, about that, let me just say something.
We have evidence that spans decades.
We have evidence that spans centuries that the Obama way fails, that anybody who believes that socialism, authoritarianism, totalitarianism, whatever strain of big governmentism, you want to cite.
If you're gonna say that's the best way to make things fair and equitable, the best way to make people prosperous, there's no evidence whatsoever that it does.
The evidence is that that genuine uh uh uh generates failure, misery, unhappiness, squalor, certainly not prosperity except for the people at the top.
So when the evidence is clear that your way doesn't work and you keep doubling down on your way, what does it say?
Does it say that you're stupid, naive, ignorant, unaware, or does it say that you are an arrogant, egotistical guy who thinks the system works, it just hasn't been tried by the right guy yet?
Uh I uh it's you know what I think, folks.
I think there are a lot of people out there that used to be liberals, and now they're not liberals.
They're neocons or they're conservatives or what have you, but they used to be liberals.
A lot of people that used to believe the same things Obama believes, and they just can't come to grips with the fact that the stuff they used to believe is as destructive as it is.
And so when they hear that stuff like Obama is doing is done on purpose, they just can't.
No, no, no.
I never wanted to hurt anybody.
I never I with my liberalism, I never wanted to harm the country.
They just can't get their arms around the fact.
But Obama's not them.
I mean, we've got two years of Obamaism.
We know that none of it works.
I mean, to point blank, let me ask you a question.
What has Obama done for you?
If you want to look at it that way, what has the government done for you?
Obama, as the steward was gonna get rid of all this unfairness, he was gonna make the world love us, he was gonna get rid of all these bad places like Abu Grab and Club Gitmo.
He's gonna get rid of all the hate for America, he's gonna rebuild the roads and the bridges and rebuild the schools and bring the test scores up and lower the seas.
What has he done for you?
What's the country done for you?
If you want to ask it that way.
I would submit that most people going through life hope and pray they don't just stop doing what they're doing because it's an obstacle.
Government's putting obstacles in people's way.
And they don't want obstacles in their way.
And they don't look, you know, government's not supposed to be an obstruction.
Supposed to be a facilitator.
Government's supposed to be on the side of the people.
But wherever you look to that, you know, headline after headline, story after story.
Guess who it is?
Targeted by this regime, targeted by Democrats, targeted by leftists, it's the achievers.
The people around whom any economic recovery will be built are being targeted for punishment.
Tax increases or what have you.
Obama in this press conference, we've got sound bites coming up.
In this press conference, Obama actually talked about the fact that we have to cut back on what we can't afford.
That government has to live within its means like families.
Now, two years ago, before he's implemented any policy, fine, say that.
But two years after the biggest expansion of government spending and indebtedness.
I think I heard yesterday that all the debt piled up from George Washington to George W. Bush has now been eclipsed in just two years of Obama.
Or will be in four years of Obama.
Something like that.
I mean, we the the debt living within our means.
From this guy?
This guy dares preach to us about living within our means.
He's the architect of a uh of a level of debt here that, for all intents and purposes, can never be paid back.
And anybody in their right mind knows this can never be paid back.
All that can happen here is that an effort be made to pay it back so that there are people willing to invest in this country and willing to invest in our financial institutions.
Now we're faced with the cut the prospect of at least giving the impression we're trying to do something about this debt.
So comes Obama's budget and everybody drops everything to study it as though Obama's got all the answers.
The architect of this mess now is looked to as the single figure who has the answer to the problem that he created.
And he's doubling down on it.
Oil is the energy source of the past.
We have to cut back on what we can't afford.
There's so much hypocrisy in this press conference that I told Cookie, find find as many examples as you can.
She wrote back, it's the whole press conference rush.
What am I supposed to do?
You know, because I've got a limit on it.
So I don't want to sound bite any longer than 60 seconds.
And he says, Well, that's gonna be a tough thing to do to this.
Well, I may grant you a waiver now and then on soundbite lengths.
It just uh it just depends.
He even talked about if we want to be honest with ourselves, he said, when it comes to spending, we have to uh be prepared to look at unjustifiable spending through the tax code.
In other words, tax cuts.
Tax cuts are government spending.
Because they equal less revenue coming to the government, so that is in his distorted view of things.
That is spending.
Tax cuts are spending, and we have to be honest with ourselves.
Unjustifiable spending through the tax code.
That would be whatever the tax rate is for the so-called rich.
In fact, tax cuts in his vernacular and his lexicon tax cuts are the only unjustifiable spending he's ever found.
Every other form of spending is justifiable.
Every other form of spending is moral, it's fine, it has a reason, it has a purpose, but tax cuts unjustifiable spending.
I don't care how you define words, and I don't care how convoluted you want to be, there is no way.
Tax cuts, equal government spending.
Ain't possible, ladies and gentlemen.
So we've got this to dissect.
We have the reasons it's happening to dissect.
We also, uh, ladies and gentlemen, have uh interesting takes from people now that the dust is sort of settled in Egypt on how the regime actually blew it, and none other than the Washington Post with a story on this of Mark Thiessen.
So a lot to do today, plus your exciting telephone calls, we hope.
All coming up right after our first obscene profit timeout right here on the EIB network.
Here are the numbers on the red egg.
It comes from Noel Shepherd at Newsbusters, the 2011 budget shortfall.
The which is the responsibility of the previous Congress now projected to be 1.65 trillion.
That's the budget deficit.
If that number is accurate, this means that since the Democrats took over Congress in 2007, the country has posted over $5 trillion in deficits.
That is more combined non-inflation adjusted red ink than the United States of America had created in all the years of its existence prior to 2007.
And so, in just four years, the Democrats recorded combined deficits greater than what had been posted in the prior 220 years.
That is astounding.
And one of the architects of this spending opens his presser today saying that we have to live within our means.
This is sort of like Adolph Hit.
Well, yeah, it's sort of like Colonel Sanders saying we got to stop killing chickens.
We gotta stop killing chickens.
Colonel Sanders having a press conference.
We gotta stop killing chickens.
It's it's just mind boggling.
But I tell you what he's doing.
He's he's playing to the independence.
He's playing to people out there who he's counting on media not to point out what we're telling you, what you already know that he's the architect of this stuff.
This is still it's Bush's fault.
It's no, he's not been president for two years.
We have to start living within our means.
It's like this budget.
He's locked in all this new spending, and now he's calling for a freeze or what have you after he's already codified the damage that he intended to be done to this country and to the uh economy.
By the way, this week marks the two-year anniversary of Obama's porculus bill.
And he's just doing another one with all the spending in his budget.
We told you he was a jackass about economics.
Jackasses are notoriously stubborn.
He's a jackass about all this.
Now, as to oil, the energy source of the past, he says.
I have a story here by Jonathan Faye, the energy writer for the Associated Press.
New drilling method opens vast oil fields in the U.S. Give you some quotes from the story.
Unemployment in North Dakota has fallen to the lowest level in the nation, 3.8%.
That's less than half the national unemployment rate of 9%.
The influx of mostly male workers to the North Dakota region has left local men lamenting a lack of women.
That's how many guys are showing up in North Dakota to work.
Convenience stores are struggling to keep shelves stocked with food.
Have you heard about this?
Are you aware of any of this?
Well, the reason is they found a new way to extract oil from the Bakken fields.
And within five years, analysts and executives predict the newly unlocked oil fields are expected to produce one million to two Million barrels of oil per day.
This is enough to boost U.S. production 20% to 40% until Obama hears about it and puts a moratorium on it.
Because it's supposedly the energy source of the past.
Or because it's too dangerous.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that production will grow a more modest 500,000 barrels a day.
New drilling technique is opening up vast fields of previously out-of-reach oil in the western United States, helping reverse a two-decade decline in domestic production of crude.
Companies are investing billions to get at oil deposits scattered across North Dakota, Colorado, Texas, and California.
And by 2015, oil executives and analysts say that the new fields could yield as much as two million barrels of oil a day.
That's more than the entire Gulf of Mexico produces.
Which half of it is now under a drilling moratorium for seven years.
We're talking the Bakkenfield among other places.
I got a quick timeout.
We'll take it.
We'll be right back.
Let me give you just a few details on this uh new drilling technique that they're using in the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota.
I mean, really, unemployment 3.8%.
There's a shortage of women because of all the male employees trooping in there in North Dakota.
They can't keep convenience store shelves stocked because of so much economic activity.
This is from the Bismarck, North Dakota Tribune.
Oil companies aren't just using a figure of speech when they say they've cracked open the Bakken.
Without the drilling technology that's forced billions, if not trillions, of tiny fissures into the dense formation, the Bakken would still be the dark, impenetrable zone that it was for eons.
A process called fracture treatment has transformed North Dakota's oil producing profile and the oil patch itself.
Fracking is what it's called.
It's a big business as drilling and a half dozen or more companies are set up in North Dakota, commanding somewhere north of three million dollars for each frack job.
Bunch of stories about this.
But the bottom line is oil is not the energy source of the past.
It is the energy source of the present.
It is the energy source of the future, and there's nothing that Obama can do to change that.
He may talk a big game about it.
He may uh he may invest with all these corporate cronies that he's getting in bed with to uh invest in all this wasteful, useless, not gonna amount to hill of beans green technology.
But meanwhile, the people who make the country work, the people who count, the people who roll up their sleeves to provide this country what they need, go where the market says go.
And that's oil and petroleum.
And there's nothing wrong with it.
It is not evil, it is not deadly.
It's not, it's it's not by its very existence of poison.
This is just irrational to be attacking something.
It's no it's no different a commodity than water.
It is produced naturally, it's part of the planet.
It's as much as anything else is a part of the planet, and we have had people find a way to harness it that changed the way Americans and people live all across the world for the better.
And it's insulting to my intelligence, everybody else's to have this thing, this this commodity, this substance attacked as uh as some form of evil by a bunch of know nothing, do nothing, never got their hands dirty, fingernails dirty to little lame leftists here who live in their theoretical utopia.
And while they try to implement this, they do real harm and real damage to real people and their lives.
At any rate, uh, ladies and gentlemen, let's go to the audio soundbite, shall we?
This is Obama at his presser, and we'll start um chronological order here.
This is when I when I when I heard him say this, I said a quick note to Cookie.
I said, give me this One, I want this one first.
Just like every family in America, the federal government has to do two things at once.
It has to live within its means while still investing in the future.
If your family trying to cut back, you might skip going out to dinner.
You might put off a vacation, but you wouldn't want to sacrifice saving for your kids' college education or making key repairs in your house.
So you cut back on when you can't afford to focus on what you can't do without.
And that's what we've done with this year's budget.
I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
We've got the single largest deficit in the history of the country.
And he's trying to tell us that we're really cut back here.
One point.
Yeah, with a scalpel.
1.6 trillion, 1.5 trillion dollar deficit, 3.7 trillion dollars spending.
There's no cutting back.
There's no living within our means.
This is insulting.
It's childish, immature, and it is insulting.
Here's the next little soundbite.
I recognize that there are going to be plenty of arguments in the months to come, and everybody's going to have to give a little bit.
But when it comes to difficult choices about our budget and our priorities, we have found common ground before.
Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill came together to save Social Security.
Bill Clinton and the Republican Congress eventually found a way to settle their differences and balance the budget.
And many Democrats and Republicans in Congress today came together in December to pass a tax cut that has made Americans' paychecks a little bigger this year and will spur on additional economic growth this year.
So I believe we can find this common ground.
His budget calls for massive tax increases.
Massive tax rate increases on the rich.
And yet here he is praising a tax cut.
There was no tax cut, by the way.
He's talking about the deal that happened in the in the lame duck session in December.
There were no tax cuts again.
The current tax rates were simply extended for a couple years.
But even then he says, pass a tax cut, made Americans' paychecks a little bigger, spur on additional economic growth.
So he admits that a philosophical or theoretical sense, tax cuts equal economic growth.
Yet his own budget promises tax increases, which will retard economic growth.
Common ground Reagan Tip O'Neill.
This is a guy who instructs his voters to punish their enemies.
This is the guy who says they show off with a knife, you show up with a gun.
This is a guy who sends his SEIU union thugs out to beat up black guys at Tea Party rallies.
Common ground.
Here's the next soundbite from the Obama budget presser.
Well, I continue to believe I'm right.
So we're going to try again.
I think what's different is everybody says now that they're really serious about the deficit.
Well, if you're really serious about the deficit, not just spending, but you're serious about the deficit overall, then part of what you have to look at is unjustifiable spending through the tax card.
Come on, this tax breaks that do not make us more competitive, do not create jobs here in the United States of America.
This is, I mean, we're we're listening to somebody who doesn't have the slightest idea what he's talking about.
We're listening to somebody who sit around and ruminated with a fellow bunch of professors in a faculty lounge, people who are obsessed with resentment, people obsessed with hatred and dislike for free market capitalism and the people who have prospered from it.
A bunch of theoreticians who in the real world couldn't accomplish anything.
They have all the answers, they have all the ideas.
If you're serious about the deficit, part of what you have to look at is unjustifiable spending through the tax code.
I have told you, the government thinks all money is theirs.
And what you end up with is the result of their compassion and large S. They decide how much you get to have.
You may be the one getting paid, but they determine how much you end up with.
And whatever, all money is government's.
And therefore, everything they don't get from everything that is produced, they consider spending.
They consider a gift.
because they're not taking it.
Even though they think they have dibs on it.
How else do you arrive at some convoluted rationale that says tax cuts are unjustifiable spending?
But that's what he said.
That's what he believes.
We have, I guess, one more.
There was a question.
The Reuters White House stenographer Patricia Zengerly said, What concerns do you have about instability, especially in Saudi Arabia as the demonstrations spread, you foresee any effects on oil prices?
And talking about Iran, can you comment about the unrest there?
What is your message to the Iranian people in light of there was some criticism that your administration didn't speak out strongly enough after the demonstrations in Iran in 2009.
On Iran.
We were clear then and we are clear now that what has been true in Egypt is should be true in Iran, which is that people should be able to express their opinions and their grievances and seek a more responsive government.
What's been different is the Iranian government's response, which is to shoot people and beat people and arrest people.
America cannot ultimately uh dictate what happens inside of Iran any more than it could inside of Egypt.
Ultimately, these are sovereign countries.
They're gonna have to make their own decisions.
Well, now that's interesting after they just got through trying to take credit for everything that happened inside Egypt.
Just try to take credit for everything that happened in Egypt.
Now we really can't tell the Iranians what to do.
Uh they're a sovereign country.
If they're gonna shoot people, they're gonna shoot people.
If they're gonna shoot people, they're gonna put people in jail, that's uh that's that's what they're that's what they're gonna do.
We can't really do much about that.
So that was the question, by the way.
I think one of the reasons for the press conference is to get into discussion of all that dilutes the message on Egypt, dilutes uh further attention to the uh the budget and the uh and the and the deficits so forth.
Anyway, uh let we'll get to your phone calls here pretty quickly.
There are a couple other things I want to touch on to set the table before we do go to the phones, and we will be back continue right after this on the EIB network.
Don't go away.
One other thing that Obama said today, uh, ladies and gentlemen, that all sounds good when you really dig into it and analyze it, it's it it is not really true.
If you want to really be cold about it, here's what he said.
You can't maintain power through coercion.
There has to be consent.
You can't maintain power through now.
If you're speaking to an idyllic American audience that believes in the civics 101 version of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence.
Yeah, that yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's really really good, Obama, but it doesn't hold up.
You can't maintain power through coercion.
There has to be consent.
Tell that to the family of the John Ills.
Tell that to the ChICOMs.
Tell that to Fidel Castro.
Tell it to Stalin, tell it to Lenin, tell it to Hitler.
I don't care.
They maintained power through coercion.
Tell it to Syria.
Tell it to Iran.
In fact, folks, the lesson of the world would seem to be just the opposite.
Regimes that are willing to shoot people.
Regimes that are willing to shoot their citizens don't seem to have any trouble holding on to power.
Now I see Snerdley in there grimacing, because he thinks I'm off on a tangent or a path that few will comprehend.
Now, shooting people we don't ever envision happening here, and in fact, people do not hold on to power indefinitely in this country.
If you're president after eight years, you're gone unless you start shooting people.
Is my Point.
You do not hold on to power.
You constitutionally have to scram, you have to get out of there.
But if an American president ever started shooting people or ordering people shot, I I dare say he would survive beyond the eight years.
I don't know how much longer after that he would survive, but this is just not right.
This whole line of thinking, you you can't maintain power through coercion.
There has to be consent.
I know what he's saying.
We have to vote on somebody, we elect them, and we have therefore consented to their governance and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And that's the idyllic way of looking at it.
But I'm telling you, the sad history of humanity is oppression, tyranny, poverty, and you name it, all brought about by authoritarian dictators who are willing to shoot people who dissent.
And they hold on to power that way.
Now they eventually are toppled, but they're certainly in power longer than eight years.
Look, it just is what it is.
I mean, eventually the Soviet Union imploded on itself.
The ChICOMs would have, but they're having to modernize a bit with free market capitalism in certain areas, but they're still shooting people.
They still put them in prison, they still have their re-education camps.
And I guarantee you, if they ever get Taiwan back, what do you think's going to happen to the population of Taiwan?
They're going to immediately be sent to re-education camps.
Never probably to be heard from again.
Because even if they pass the re-education test, nobody's going to believe them.
So the regime will just get rid of them.
So that's the danger.
That that that's the real danger is that coercion does maintain power.
Quite the opposite.
These guys, he's again, this is just faculty lounge hem-hawing that's designed to sound attractive to independents and others, you know, he pay scant little attention, but in truth, it's one of the reasons why we are the exception.
Our government has never shot people.
We have yet to elect somebody who was willing to shoot people to stay in power beyond his constitutional limits.
And I tell you, given the history of the world, that's pretty mean accomplishment.
That's pretty significant.
It's a fragile thing that we have here in this country, and that's why there are so many people alarmed by what they see.
There have seldom been in people's lifetimes this kind of assault on the day-to-day freedoms that seem to be routine here.
And these assaults are disguised as economic policies or oil drilling more autonomy.
You start limiting the access people have to gasoline.
Because we have a regime who whatever convoluted reason thinks that oil is an energy source of the past.
Let's talk about your freedom.
A bunch of local communities.
Folks, I would be very guarded about your cell phone.
The ability of citizens to talk to each other represents a great threat to people who want to control the population.
It just is what it is.
I mean, what's the first thing they did in Egypt?
Shut it down.
Shut down the ability, it got to it too late, but they tried to shut down the ability of the quote-unquote revolutionaries to communicate with one another.
They tried to shut down the flow of information to people in Egypt, find out what the world thought about what they were doing.
Well, guess who's asking for control of the switch to shut down the internet?
Barack Obama.
Of course, of course, folks, this is all done, the mythical national security emergency down the road.
Depending on where you look, maybe happening in your community.
Some city council or state legislature, somebody is trying to pass laws saying you can't use your cell phone in the car.
Even if you have a hands-free version that you can't text, I got a story somewhere, it doesn't matter where, that they're trying to pass a law that you cannot text on your phone at a red light.
Much less while you're driving.
Now, in the sense of, well, that limb that makes all kinds of perfect theft.
People are distracted in their cars, they're going to run over children and a number of other people unuspectedly in a three-feth or forth.
It makes perfect theft for the government to say that we can't.
Yeah, yeah, but where do you draw the line on this?
Once you start agreeing to the government saying you can't do this, you can't do it.
Where does it stop at some point?
But the biggest thing to note about it is that there are those who want to restrict this kind of freedom and this kind of and it's always under the guise of public safety, saving somebody's life or what have you.
Very fragile thing we have here, and that's why there's a Tea Party trying to defend it.
The President of the United States exhibits no spending discipline whatsoever.
You are to cut back on your vacation, you are to stop eating out.
You are to forego repairs on your home.
You have to live within your means because you can't print money.
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