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July 18, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:48
July 18, 2011, Monday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Yes, America's Anchorman is away today, and this is your undocumented anchor man sitting in, Mark Stein.
Honoured to be here.
No supporting paperwork whatsoever.
I'm a foreign exchange student at the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
It's a great program.
Guys like me get to study here.
And in return, Barack Obama gets to sit in on Vladimir Putin's Monday night poker game with Ayatollah Khomeini and Zhang Xi Min and win back all the trillions of dollars in debt that America owes.
So it all works out.
Rush is away today, but he will be back live on Wednesday to take you through the end of the week with full throttle, premium strength, excellence in broadcasting.
It's just the watered-down substitute host variety today, live from Ice Station EIB in far northern New Hampshire, just a smidgenette south of the Quebec border, because you never know when you might have to make a run for it.
Mr. Snerdley's running the show from New York City today, and I believe Nanny Bloomberg is live in the control room with him to check that the EIB network's trans fats are in full compliance with New York City law.
1-800-282-2882, Carmageddon is apparently over in Los Angeles, Highway 405.
You can go on there and get stuck in traffic just like normal now.
Apparently, everything is back to normal there.
Carmageddon is over on, what do they call it out there?
Freeways, freeways in California, aren't they?
I'd love to have a freeway here in this part of northern.
I'd love to have a Carmageddon.
It's a bit of a disappointment, I thought.
I thought it was going to be like, you know, Carmageddon in Paris when it's like a big public holiday there.
And in some of the livelier bon lure of Paris, the youths, the quote youths, unquote, as the discreet French media say, light up all the Renault and citroens.
I thought it was going to be that kind of Carmageddon they had in Los Angeles.
It's, you know, we're two miles from the local mosque.
There's the streets are full of flaming cars.
It's very annoying.
If you're one of these sophisticated French types, you know, and you're having what they call a sankasette, that's when it's, I think, 5 to 7 p.m. in the evening, a sankas set.
That's when a sophisticated Frenchman spends that time with his mistress.
And when he spent his time with his mistress, he gets up, he puts his clothes back on, and he's supposed to hurry back to his wife.
And it's tremendously embarrassing when he looks out the window and he sees that his citroen is in flames on the sidewalk.
So I thought it was going to be like that kind of Carmageddon out in Los Angeles.
And instead, Mr. Snerdley told me they're just installing a couple of roundabouts in the middle of this key stretch of Freeway 405.
So it was a big disappointment to me.
Meanwhile, beyond Carmageddon, life goes on.
1-800-282-2882.
Don't call my bluff.
Don't call my bluff, says the old poker face, Barack Obama.
Don't call my bluff.
And oddly enough, nobody in the state-run media is inclined to call his bluff.
He's the grown-up in the room.
He's fiscally prudent.
According to a new CBS news poll from CBS News.
I didn't know CBS News was still in business.
That's great, isn't it?
I'm very heartened to hear that.
CBS News, they're still going.
Who knew?
Anyway, CBS News poll: 71% shun GOP handling of debt crisis.
This is the headline.
71% shun GOB handling of debt crisis.
So Barack Obama, according to this CBS News poll, and you might want to have a look at the numbers down here because they can be very murkily constructed, CBS News polls.
But 71% shun the GOP handling of the debt crisis.
Obama is accomplishing his principal goal, which is to make whatever happens the fault of the Republicans.
He's proposed, supposedly, this is why everybody's saying he's the grown-up in the room, he's proposed $4 trillion in savings.
Like what?
He hasn't proposed any savings of a trillion this or a trillion that.
He stood at the teleprompter and he's read out a large number a couple of times.
He said trillion.
He said trillion with a sober and serious expression on his face.
And the White House Press Corps takes him seriously.
The only specific cuts this man has proposed for fiscal year 2012.
And that's all that matters, by the way.
All the rest is ridiculous when they talk about the out years.
You know, this will bring savings of $12.8 trillion by the year 2040.
This will bring savings of $23 trillion by the year 2070.
There isn't going to be an America by 2070.
There's no point even taking seriously discussions on out years.
In the out years, Barack Obama is going to be giving speeches in the United Arab Emirates for six-figure sums, like the way Bill Clinton spends his time.
So anything he proposes for the out-years is entirely irrelevant.
Don't pay any attention to that.
All that matters is savings now, fiscal year 2012.
Anything other than fiscal year 2012 or permanent structural changes in the entitlements starting now is just nonsense.
It's a bluff.
And as he says, he doesn't want anyone to call this bluff.
Fiscal year 2012, he's proposed cuts of $2 billion.
$2 billion.
The man who's added $4 trillion to the national debt in two years can find $2 billion with a B, $2 billion worth of cuts.
Hallelujah.
What a fiscally prudent leader we have.
No wonder the media take him so seriously.
$2 billion is what the United States government borrows every 10 hours.
So in the time it takes you to sit in a room at the White House and listen to Obama explaining his plan for $2 billion worth of cuts, he's already borrowed it all back.
Negotiating with Obama is literally not worth the time.
Goldman Sachs, Goldman Sachs, the great recruiting ground for Obama administration officials in the same way that the Democratic Party, former administration officials, is the great recruiting ground for Goldman Sachs.
Goldman Sachs has cut its estimate.
They're entwined together like the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.
You remember the way Mullah Omar's daughter was married to Osama bin Laden and Osama bin Laden's daughter was married to Mullah Omar?
That's the way it is with the Democratic Party, Bigwigs and Goldman Sachs.
Goldman Sachs has cut its estimate of third quarter GDP growth to 1.5%.
And it expects the unemployment rate, here's the good news, the unemployment rate is going to come down, but only very slightly to 8.25% by the end of 2012.
In other words, on Election Day, unemployment will be what it is today.
The flatline economy will be what it is today.
And these are the numbers from Obama's pals, from the three guys left at Goldman Sachs who haven't been given jobs in the Obama administration.
So the Flatline administration is confident that the gangbusters recovery summer can be kept going through November 2012.
More from the Flatline Administration.
This is from the New York Times.
The auto industry is on pace to sell 28% fewer new vehicles than it did 10 years ago.
That's an amazing statistic.
That's like 28% fewer new vehicles.
It's like, remember all those jokes people make about, well, you don't want to be the last buggy whip manufacturer when they invent the automobile.
The automobile industry is going the way of the buggy whip, and we haven't even invented its replacement yet.
The auto industry is on pace to sell 28% fewer new vehicles than it did 10 years ago.
Sales of ovens and stoves are at their lowest in 20 years.
So if you want to stick your head in the oven and light the gas because you can't stand the way the economy is going, you won't even be able to do it in a new oven.
Sales of ovens and stoves are at their lowest in 20 years.
According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, discretionary service spending, that's basically everything except food, shelter, and healthcare, is down 7%.
That's over twice as high as it's fallen in any previous recession.
And while we're giving out all these numbers, here's my favorite number of the day.
It's an absolutely ingenious statistical comparison from Mark Tapscott in the Washington Examiner.
According to Jim Messina, his campaign manager, through the second quarter of 2011, President Obama now has 552,000 contributors to his 2012 re-election campaign.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that during the same two quarters, the U.S. economy generated 260,000 jobs.
In other words, Obama attracted twice as many campaign donors as his economic policies created new jobs.
Who are these people?
I can understand getting suckered the first time around in 2008.
I can just about understand it.
I couldn't really, because a lot of us, including me, including Rush, a lot of people, got this guy figured back in 2008.
But I can forgive folks getting suckered first time around.
Who are these people ponying up money again?
2012.
Through the second quarter of 2011, half a million contributors.
President Obama attracted half a million re-election campaign contributors.
At the same period, he only created 260,000 jobs.
In other words, he attracts twice as many campaign contributors as his administration creates jobs.
Now, the media are still agreeing to go along and not call his bluff, not call his bluff on the dead parrot economy.
If you read the reports, they're still using this word unexpectedly.
Unemployment figures were unexpectedly disappointing for the second quarter.
GDP growth was unexpectedly disappointing for the second quarter.
Sales of ovens and stoves were unexpectedly down for the second quarter.
All this word unexpectedly.
But it's getting difficult.
It's getting difficult to do this stuff with a straight face.
Candy Crowley was on CNN.
I don't know whether you saw this.
I only see CNN in airports when you're delayed at the gate and you're sitting there for six hours and they're just showing you Wolf Blitzer till your plane takes off.
And I think that's why CNN's ratings are where they are actually because nobody can – everyone associates it with just gate delay.
So the minute they get home, the last thing they want to do is switch on CNN and actually see three hours of the Wolf Blitzer show from the comfort of their own home.
So anyway, Candy Crowley is on CNN and nobody saw this.
So I'd like to bring it to your attention because this is the latest official explanation for the state of the economy.
Candy Crowley was talking to Jacob Liu, director of the Office of Management and Budget.
And she asked him about some of these unexpectedly disappointing numbers.
And this is what Jacob Lew replied.
Quote, I don't want to get this wrong, because this is such a fascinating explanation as to what's happening with the economy.
I don't want to get this wrong, so I'm going to be careful here.
Quote, Mr. Liu, director of the Office of Management and Budget, quote, look, it has been a difficult few weeks in the economy.
Ain't that the truth?
A difficult few weeks, a difficult few weeks.
Everything was going great up until, I don't know, what was it now?
The second week in June, something like that.
And then we've had a difficult few weeks.
So he goes, look, it has been a difficult few weeks in the economy.
Have been some external factors from the nuclear accident in Japan to other things that made the growth slower.
Unquote.
Did you know that?
I thought it, I've been racking my brains to figure out what could possibly be wrong with the U.S. economy.
Why is there officially 9% unemployment and unofficially it's way higher?
Why is GDP growth flatlined?
Why is the housing market slumped?
Why are two-thirds of the mortgages in Harry Reid's state of Nevada underwater?
I mean, racking my brain because Obama's done everything right.
He did the big trillion-dollar stimulus.
He did the whole thing.
What could possibly be the explanation for why we've had a difficult few weeks in the economy?
And it turns out it's the nuclear accident in Japan.
Who knew?
It's basically the aftershock of the Japanese earthquake has been responsible for the U.S. unemployment rate, the U.S. underwater mortgages, and the U.S. flatline economy.
So as soon as the Japanese clear up their problems with that nuclear reactor, Recovery Summer will be going gangbusters all over again.
We're going to talk about that.
We're going to talk about the debt ceiling, which is really one of those ceilings like you see in a James Bond movie where he gets into the elevator and the ceiling of the elevator starts coming down and crushing him.
That's what this debt ceiling is doing to us.
And this is no time to be raising it.
You've got to bust through it the way 007 would.
Mark Stein in for Rush, 1-800-282-2882.
Oh, get up.
I love doing this show from New Hampshire because we don't get a chance to get funky in this part of northern New Hampshire.
So I don't get – oh, no, we don't go – how?
And we don't go, get up, get up.
We don't – We don't get a chance to get on down or get on up.
That's how bad it is.
It's basically just always the same.
We're entirely consistent.
We never get on down and we never get on up.
That's just the way it is.
Yeah, we do do cow tipping.
And if you cow tip right, the cow never gets on up again.
But 1-800-282-2882, Mark Stein in for Rush.
In the 20 years ago, it's amazing, really, 20 years ago, Clinton became president with the great line that James Carville gave him.
It's the economy stupid.
In debt-ridden America, 20 years later, it's the stupidity economists.
The economists file all these reports and disappointing, unexpectedly disappointing.
We get these economic numbers.
It's the stupidity.
It's the stupidity.
It's the stupidity economists.
How stupid.
Your government at work, sitting in Federal Reserve vaults, are $1 billion.
There's $1 billion that nobody wants, right?
Now, a billion dollars doesn't seem like a lot of money these days because we're so indebted, you know.
So it's not like when you've got $15 trillion worth of debt, what's a billion dollars?
But it's an image of what's wrong.
A billion dollars that nobody wants.
Why?
Because they're $1 billion coins.
Nobody likes dollar coins, so they don't use them.
But in 2007, Congress mandated the production of a certain number of US dollar coins.
They thought that the way to get people to buy these coins or to use these coins would be to put the presidents on them.
So because people out there are just itching.
You don't use a dollar coin.
What would make you use a dollar coin?
Well, you know, obviously, if you've got Millard Fillmore on a dollar coin or Chester Arthur on a dollar coin, suddenly the whole dollar coin thing falls into place.
You can't wait to get out there to Walmart and jingling your Mallard-Filmar dollar coins and your Chester Arthur dollar coins in your pocket and get out there and start spending them.
Your Benjamin Harris dollar coin.
That's all been, that's the only thing that's been preventing Americans from, well, no, you can't get Taft on a dollar coin.
They've got to save Taft for the $2 coin.
No, no, no.
Taft will have to wait for the $2 coin.
But you can't get, you know, Americans didn't want to use the dollar coin.
So you put Chester Arthur on the dollar coin and boom, they're there.
They're jingling their Chester Arthur dollars all over, spending them all over Walmart.
Funnily enough, it didn't work out like that.
So there's one billion dollars in coins that nobody wants.
Nobody wants.
Maybe they could drop them all on that Japanese nuclear reactor and solve all the problems there.
The whole thing would be crushed under the weight of the Chester Arthur, Mallard-Filmo dollar coins, and there would be no damage that the Japanese nuclear reactor is doing to the American economy would all be over.
But instead, even though so far we've got a billion dollars of coins sitting in the vaults, because it's mandated by Congress, they can't stop producing them.
They've still got to carry on producing dollar coins that nobody wants to fulfill the obligations of this congressional program.
Congress required the production of these dollar coins.
We are not yet Zimbabwe.
You know, you don't need a wheelbarrow of $5,000 bills to take to the supermarket to buy a quarter mil.
We're not Zimbabwe yet.
But we are actually producing money that nobody wants, that is useless, that is just going to sit in a vault for all time just because Congress mandated it.
It's the stupidity economists.
It's the stupidity.
And here's another one.
Two Navy ships that cost $300 million.
Okay?
$300 million.
That's not a lot of money.
That's just a third of a billion dollars.
A third of a billion.
It's nothing.
It's nothing.
They all had nice names.
The USNS Benjamin Isherwood and the USNS Henry Eckford were commissioned in 1985 at the Pennsylvania Shipbuilding Company to carry fuel to the Navy's fleet around the globe.
They were never completed for some reason.
They've never seen a day of service.
They've sat at the mouth of the James River as part of the US Navy's ghost fleet, 95% complete, 84% complete.
They tried to offload them to a British company that wanted to sell them on to a NATO country, and the British company bailed out.
They're going to the scrapyard, cost a third of a billion dollars without having seen a day of service.
This isn't big stuff.
This is just stuff that goes on in the federal government day in, day out.
Little itsy bitsy sums.
A billion dollars in coins nobody wants.
A third of a billion mothballing two ships that have never seen a day's service.
It's the stupidity economists.
Mark Stein in for Rush.
Yeah, great to be with you.
Rush returns Wednesday.
Don't forget you can go to rushlimbore.com and it's like he's not away.
It's like he's not away.
If you're a 24-7 Rush subscriber, you don't have to worry about sinister foreign guest hosts taking over the airwaves because you can just wallow in Rush 24-7 if you go to rushlimbore.com.
It's the stupidity economists.
Big government, by definition, will be profoundly stupid.
And eventually it gets so stupid that it becomes an existential threat.
There's just so much waste everywhere you turn.
I mentioned those billion dollars in coins nobody wants sitting in Federal Reserve vaults.
Here at the other end of the scale, it's just a little nothing, nothing kind of expenditure.
The Omaha public schools use more than $130,000 in federal stimulus dollars, right?
This is interesting, by the way.
The stimulus was supposed to stimulate the economy.
So in Omaha, they sent the stimulus dollars to the school board.
Because let's face it, you know, if that doesn't stimulate the economy, what does?
So they sent $130,000 to the Omaha School Board, which used it to buy 8,000 copies of a diversity manual instructing teachers and staff members on how to become more culturally sensitive.
That's by teaching them that American institutions exist to channel wealth and power to white people.
I don't know whether that's true at the Omaha School Board.
I haven't looked at the composition, but apparently this was what they needed to spend stimulus dollars on.
By the way, they bought 8,000 diversity manuals for $130,000.
That works out.
What is, my mental arithmetic isn't what it used to be.
I guess I'm almost like a product of the Omaha school system itself.
I think that works out to about $16 a piece.
Don't they get a group discount?
Don't they get a bulk discount?
I mean, Barnes ⁇ Noble wouldn't pay that kind of money for some diversity manual.
Amazon.com wouldn't pay that kind of.
But they paid $16 a piece for these diversity manuals to teach people about entrenched white power and privilege.
Now, even if you think, even if you think that that is the business of a public school system to in effect engage in social engineering, in fact, really child abuse, I mean, in years to come, we will look at what these people did to these kids as a form of child abuse.
Even if you thought that was something that the Omaha school district should be doing, they know all this stuff already.
What do they need to buy some stupid diversity manual that tells them everything that's taken for granted by every single teacher in the system?
School board president Sandra Jensen says the district doesn't endorse everything in the book, but she says it's intended to open a dialogue.
No, it isn't.
That's the last thing anyone wants in the American public education system.
They don't want any kind of dialogue.
When you're spending $130,000, federal dollars, federal dollars, you know, if the Omaha taxpayers want to do this themselves, if people who have the misfortune to be trapped within the Omaha school district want to pass a school budget that provides for spending $16 a piece on stupid social engineering diversity manuals, peddling the same old bromides that have been stale since 1972, good luck to them.
Good luck to them.
But there's no reason why federal taxpayers should be doing that.
It's the stupidity economists.
Let's go to David in Vail, Colorado.
I'll be out in Colorado at the end of this month, actually.
I think not Vale, but Denver.
Great to have you with us on the show, David.
Oh, thanks, Mike.
Thanks for taking my call.
Good to have you on there.
Hey, Arnie.
My pleasure.
Earlier, you were commenting about how Obama said he's got $4 trillion in savings.
You notice he's kind of parsing his words there.
He's not saying cuts.
He's saying savings, which can mean almost anything.
You can cut subsidies.
You can cut tax breaks.
You can do all those things.
And that's considered a savings.
You can raise taxes, and that's considered savings.
Yeah, and it's one of these weasel words.
It's like with the stimulus, you know, the way the stimulus was intended to, quote, create or save, unquote, so many jobs.
Nobody knows what that means.
You know, in other words, he was saying that if we let him blow a trillion dollars on his stimulus, it will, quote, create or save, unquote, a certain number of jobs.
There's no way of managing that.
He's basically saying, well, a certain number of jobs would disappear anyway, so this would save jobs that might otherwise have been under threat of disappearing.
You can't even measure that.
And it's the same with these savings, these so-called savings for out years.
Out years.
Do you talk much in your life, David, about out years?
No.
So if you had, I don't know how you guys live in Vail, Colorado, because it's like an upscale community compared to my broken down neck of the woods.
But if you had an expensive cocaine habit, I'm not saying you do, but if you did have an expensive cocaine habit and somebody said you ought to do something about it, and you were projecting a certain percentage in savings in the amount of money you were spending on cocaine that would save a certain amount of money in the quote out years, would anyone take you seriously?
No, they wouldn't.
This phrase is a good example of how government economics has entirely flown the coop from real economics.
Anytime any politician uses the phrase out years, you should just switch him off.
You should stick a bag on his head and go do something else because there's no point paying any attention to him.
How many trillions of dollars in savings do you think Obama should be presenting us with?
Savings?
I don't care about any savings.
Cuts is what we're doing.
Yeah, exactly.
You want real cuts.
The idea that what he means by savings as well, by the way, is that he's talking about possibly slowing the rate of increase in government.
So in other words, the idea is that government should be projected.
And the Republicans are guilty of this as well.
Even they foresee that government, the budget is just going to grow and grow and grow, and we're going to be running massive deficits until the year 2030, 2040, but then start to tail off.
There isn't going to be an America in 2030 or 2040 unless we start it now.
So anytime a politician is not talking about cuts and anytime he's using weasel words and anytime he's talking about savings, David is right on this, or talking about the out years, he's not worth paying attention to.
You should tell that guy he's not serious.
Great to have you with us on the show, David.
It is the stupidity economists.
Police in Georgia shut down girls' lemonade stand.
I started collecting these stories.
In my soon-to-be imminently, forthcomingly imminent book, I've got a little bit on some of this excessive regulation.
There's a section in that book about the regulators going to church bake sales and closing down church bake sales where little old ladies bake pies at home and then sell them to raise funds for the church.
That's illegal in Pennsylvania.
You've got to have a prep kitchen.
You've got to have one of these industrial kitchens, stainless steel.
That's the only, that in Pennsylvania, you cannot bake a pie and sell it at your local church unless it's done in a prep kitchen.
Sorry, that's tyranny.
Tocqueville got that right.
Tocqueville, 200 years ago, French guy 200 years ago got the measure of these guys.
He said that's soft despotism.
Soft despotism in Midway, Georgia.
Police in Georgia have shut down a lemonade stand run by three girls trying to save up for a trip to a water park saying they didn't have a business license or the required permits.
Midway police chief Kelly Morganstar says police didn't know how the lemonade was made, who made it or what was in it.
So what?
Who cares if the cop doesn't know what's in the lemonade?
If the cops want to know what's in their lemonade, they should make their own lemonade back at Midway Police Headquarters.
The girls have been operating for one day when police chief Morningstar and another officer cruised by and said the girls needed a business license, a peddler's permit, and a food permit to operate, even on residential property.
The permits cost $50 a day or $180 per year.
In other words, you need three permits to run a lemonade stand in Midway, Georgia, and you need to spend a minimum of $150 in order to run a lemonade stand in Midway, Georgia.
The police chief herself, so this isn't some rogue cop.
You know, this isn't your Clint Eastwood Maverick type suddenly taking the law into his own hands and smacking down these little three kid punks running their lemonades.
It's nothing like that.
This is the police chief, the police chief herself, shutting down the lemonade stand and saying that for three schoolgirls to run a lemonade stand on residential property, you need three permits of $150 a day.
Sorry, that's tyranny.
It's tyranny.
What did you the girl?
Yeah.
Well, you know, Mr. Snerdley says the girls are criminals and we should make an example of them.
I mean, after all, they're breaching three laws.
That's right.
Three permits.
Yeah, that's right.
Lemonade is a gateway drug.
So this is perhaps part of Michelle Obama's thing on cracking down on and Nanny Bloomberg and all this unhealthy soda that you're putting into yourself.
But this is supposed to quit.
Now, Mr. Snerdley says, I shouldn't be questioning the rules.
It is a condition of my green card that I am not allowed to ferment the overthrow of the United States government.
So, so I want to emphasize that nothing I'm doing on today's show meets the definition of fermenting.
This is an entirely non-fermenting broadcast.
But I don't believe there's anything in the terms of my green card that says I'm not allowed to ferment the overthrow of the Midway Georgia Police Department.
And I'm in favor of the overthrow of the Midway Georgia Police Department.
I'm in favor of police chief Kelly Morningstar being run out of office for telling three girls that they need $150 worth of permits in order to sell lemonade.
This is one of the reasons I came to this country.
I love that American expression.
If life hands you lemons, make lemonade.
Not anymore.
It's illegal.
When Obama and the statists hand you lemons, the government enforcers won't let you make lemonades.
Conservatives often talk about what hill is worth dying on.
Oh, let this go.
Let this go.
That's not a hill worth dying on.
Lemonade, the right to run a lemonade stand is a hill worth dying on.
I would be in favor of a junior version of the Tea Party called the Lemonade Party with millions of children in it across this country who want the right to do as their predecessors through American history have done, and that is to put up a stand outside their house and sell homemade lemonade.
Lemonade is a liberty issue.
The Second Amendment, guys, the First Amendment, guys, the gun crowd say, you know, gun control isn't about guns, it's about control.
Lemonade control isn't about lemonade.
Whatever Police Chief Morningstar says, lemonade is about control.
1-800-282-2882-Mark Stein in for rush.
Mark Stein in for Rush on the EIB network.
Let's go to Chris in Dayton, Ohio.
Chris, you're live on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Well, hi, Mark.
I was just calling about that article or, well, that statement you made about the guy from The administration or representing the White House stance on the fact that the economy is tanking because of the situation in Japan.
Right.
And, I mean, from where I'm from, we all know what the real answer is, why the economy is tanking.
It's the gas prices.
Now, you're disputing that the economy in Dayton, Ohio is being affected by the aftershock of the Japanese earthquake, which is the official position of the Office of Management and Budget.
You know, the same thing happened when President Bush was in office, you know, when the gas prices went up.
I mean, around here, single-handedly, the gas prices put the automobile industry on its ear in this town by itself.
Well, you know, the thing about it is gas prices have doubled since Obama came to office.
I think they were, whatever they were, $1.85 at the time he won the election, and they're somewhere between $370 and $4 now.
And of course, that does change the rationale.
In large parts of this country, people have to commute a long distance to relatively not terribly well-remunerated jobs.
And the economic rationale for that is transformed according to whether you're paying a $1.85 a gallon or whether you're paying $3.70 a gallon.
But it also affects everything.
It affects the cost of delivering food from one place to another.
So it contributes to the food inflation that we see.
But that's a political decision.
The United States, ever since the creation of the Department of Energy, which is actually really the Department of No Energy, that's the Federal Department of Energy, the Jimmy Carter creation, which the Republicans have been pledged to abolish since 1980 and have never got around to it.
The Department of No Energy ensures that in order to make us feel virtuous about ourselves, a country that could be more or less energy self-sufficient actually gets ever more dependent on foreign sources of energy.
So it's a political decision.
And Americans who are mad about gas prices should take it up with the people who are preventing the exploitation, the exploitation of domestic energy sources, which is the government of the United States and the Department of No Energy.
Exactly.
And what I find ironic is that, you know, President Obama signed the release of strategic oil from our reserves.
Okay, yeah, our gas prices went down, you know, okay, 50 cents for a while, but now they're going back up.
Yeah, yeah.
Because there's no point skimming the top off a lake, off a government lake.
That's not going to do anything in the long term.
The long-term gas price is being set by the Obama administration's policies.
And its policies are that energy is bad, economic growth is bad, economic growth is destructive to the planet.
Stephen Chu, the non-energy secretary, the genius non-energy secretary, came into office saying that he thought it would be a great idea if Americans were paying the same gas prices as in Europe.
Well, in the United Kingdom, it's about $10 a gallon right now.
Now, the Energy Secretary of the United States wants that $10 a gallon as a model for you guys.
So it's going to be $2.50.
What you're paying now, it's going to be three times higher than that.
That's what the government official in charge of gas prices, the cabinet secretary with responsibility for gas prices, he wants you paying $10 a gallon, Chris.
That's ridiculous.
The average person would never be able to afford that.
No, no, Chris, you're looking at this the wrong way because they're going to install new meters on those gas tanks.
And to get a gallon of gas in your Toyota Corolla, you'll just have to put in 10 of those exciting dollar coins with Chester Arthur and Mallard Fillmore on that nobody wants.
You just put 10 of the Franklin Pierce dollar coins in the gas tank, and they'll give you a gallon of gas back in return.
That's the Obama economic model.
It's sure to work.
Great to have you with us on the show.
Mark Stein in for rush.
Lots more straight ahead.
Mark Stein in for rush as the debt ceiling negotiations go on.
How will it end?
How will it end?
Oh, it's a cliffhanger.
The Japanese, by the way, are not just destroying the American economy through their earthquake aftershocks, as the Office of Management and Budget has explained to us.
They also beat the United States in the Women's World Cup and soccer.
I didn't even know there was a Women's World Cup, but apparently I knew there was a Gay World Cup.
Do the Americans play in the Gay World Cup?
Do we have a team in that, or is it just Saudi Arabia and Yemen?
I'm not sure.
I'll have to look into that.
The Women's World Cup, Japan beat the United States 3-1.
We were so close, said Abby Warmbach of the American team.
3-1 isn't really close unless you're using Obama-type math, Abby.
I mean, you lost badly.
Japan beat the United States Women's World Cup 3-1.
Mark Stein in for rush on the EIB network.
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