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March 15, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:44
March 15, 2012, Thursday, Hour #2
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Well, now there's a lot of confusion out there over whether or not there will be a release from the U.S. strategic oil reserves.
Some say that the press secretary, Jay Carney says that that's false.
That there will be no release.
But the Hill.com, the National Journal, and Reuters.
In fact, Reuters is running an exclusive, which says that the U.S., comma, Britain to agree emergency oil stocks release.
So now there's rampant confusion.
And there's confusion in the oil markets because the oil markets started to react to the news that there was going to be a release from the strategic reserves.
But a couple of journalists have tweeted that the White House press secretary says, no, no, no, no, this reports are all false.
But these stories that I have here from particularly the Hill.com and Reuters are lengthy.
Welcome back, folks.
Rush Limbaugh, the EIB network.
Here we are, 800-282-2882, if you want to be on the program.
Let me give you some of the details here from the Reuters.
Exclusive.
U.S., Britain to agree emergency oil stocks release.
Britain has decided to cooperate with the U.S. in a bilateral agreement to release strategic oil stocks, two British sources said, in an effort to prevent high fuel prices derailing economic growth in a U.S. election year, i.e., to help Obama's re-election efforts.
A formal request from the U.S. to Britain to join forces in a release of oil from government-controlled reserves is expected shortly following a meeting on Wednesday in Washington between Obama and David Cameron, who discussed the issue.
Britain would respond positively, the two sources said, buried in this Reuters piece.
Details of the timing, volume, and duration of the emergency drawdown have yet to be settled.
But a detailed agreement is expected by the summer, one of the sources said.
So according to the Reuters story, it sounds indeed like the deal is to do this release closer to the elections, which makes it even more cynical.
I thought it was odd that they would release oil now, because it's a purely political move designed to help Obama's re-election, and it's March.
Why do it now?
And so buried in that piece.
Ed Reuters details of the timing, the volume, and the duration of the release have yet to be settled, but a detailed agreement's expected by the summer.
Now, in this speech that Obama gave to the college kids in Largo, Maryland.
He said, there's no silver bullet.
There's no silver bullet if we can release a lower oil prices.
No silver bullet.
That's another reason for the confusion.
Obama's, and this is not the first day he said that there's no silver bullet, there's no magic bullet that anything anybody can do to lower gas prices, yet here comes this multi-sourced story of a release from the strategic reserves.
Now it's being denied by the White House press secretary.
So there we are, folks.
Rampant confusion.
I guarantee you what's happened here.
There is an agreement to release oil from the strategic reserves, if necessary, closer to the election.
The deal depends on what the price of oil and gasoline happens to be at the time.
Cameron has been brought along to agree since Obama threw him a party.
And the UK looks to be an ally with Obama in this.
And everything's hunky-dory.
So they have an agreement, and they're going to do this sometime later in the year, if necessary, to aid Obama's re-election.
The story leaks out.
It gets reported as though today this is going to happen.
Now the press secretary tweets, no, no, no, no, there's no deal.
And there may not be a deal.
The deal may not happen at all, depends on what the gasoline oil price is later in the summer.
So that's what's happened here.
And as a result, the oil markets are kind of confused, not knowing what's real and what isn't.
Obama did say there's no silver bullet.
We don't have it in either of the remaining sound bites we've got, but what he did say it.
Here, let's get these other two out of the way.
By the way, he did say one of these sound bites earlier, we're not drilling in a national mall.
We're not drilling your house.
Let me tell you something.
I would love to have an oil rig in my house.
I'm gonna be very honest with you.
I would love to be sitting in my skybox overlooking the ocean, and right out there in my backyard, right there on the dune, an oil derrick.
I would love to heck with the turtles.
I wouldn't turn any lights on it.
The only thing about the turtles is the lights gotta keep the lights off so the turtle hatchlings go to the ocean.
I wouldn't turn the thing, I wouldn't, I wouldn't light it up.
Turtles would never know it's there.
Yeah.
Wouldn't you like to have an oil derrick in your backyard?
Wouldn't you like a chance to be the Beverly Hillbillies?
I'd sit out there at my skybox and I watch with great pleasure and great pride.
Oil is prosperity.
I I'd love to discover golden diamonds on my property too.
Here, let's get to these other sound bites.
This is number 27.
We've only got two to go here, then we'll move on.
There's a problem with a strategy that only relies on drilling, and that is America uses more than 20% of the world's oil.
If we drilled every square inch of this country, so we went to your house and we went to the National Mall and we put up those rigs everywhere, we'd still have only two percent of the world's known oil reserves.
Let's say we missed something.
Maybe it's 3% instead of two.
We're using 20.
We have two.
Now you don't need to be getting an excellent education at Prince George's community college to know that we've got a math problem here.
Right.
Well, it's like any math problem.
If any part of the equation has got false data in it, then the results are going to be flawed and incorrect, and this 2% number is wrong.
We have far more than 2% of the world's reserves.
We just haven't gone and got it, but there's much more.
The government gets to gets to define what the 2% is, and there's there's rampant confusion even over that.
But this is a statistic that the left has been using to try to guilt you, really.
The purpose of this statistic.
I've heard it for 30 years.
The way it actually has always been stated is we are 2% of the world's population, and we use 25% of the world's resources.
That's what they've always said.
And that coming from the Alinsky Marxist left is designed to make us all feel guilty.
That we're thieves, and that we've run around the world using our superpower status, and we've stolen the resources from other poor little countries, and we've left them destitute and poor and in poverty, all for our own lifestyle enhancement.
We're really we're really a bunch of bad people.
That's what that statistic is designed to impart.
And it's been a staple of the Democrat Party, as I say, for 30 years.
Here's the final soundbite.
They've been talking down new sources of energy.
They dismiss wind power.
They dismiss solar power.
They make jokes about biofuels.
Let me tell you something.
If some of these folks were around when Columbus set sail, they must have been founding members of the Flat Earth Society.
They they would not have believed that the world was round.
Hardy Harhar, I am laughing so hard I'm splitting my side.
This guy's such a comedian.
He's so funny.
Uh let me make one point about about this.
They make jokes about biofuels.
Uh, we make jokes about him.
Last week or the week before, Obama was in Florida, where he suggested that a replacement fuel for oil would be algae.
And he looked at the audience in Florida.
He said, I've I've looked down there, Everglades, and you got lots of algae.
What if someone find a way to turn algae in oil?
Now the proper reaction here is what is the difference between algae and oil?
Why?
This is the question you have to ask yourself.
Why is oil filthy, rotten, dirty, stinky?
And algae is clean and pure and filled with potential.
When we already know what we can do with oil.
We know the magic that there is in the refining of oil.
Oil is as much a part of nature as is algae.
The difference is there's no magic in algae.
If there were, it would have been discovered.
The latest biofuel that was touted was ethanol.
And that was to take corn away from Mexicans and their tacos and to put it into gasoline for us in our cars.
And we have found out that it's not efficient.
It's not cheaper, and it's actually harder on engines than regular old gasoline.
But this assumption that everything the free markets come up with is somehow corrupt.
It's dirty, it's evil, it's polluting, it destroys the planet.
But algae?
What's a difference?
Algae and oil are no different than a blade of grass.
No different than a mud puddle.
It's all nature.
Oil, nobody created it.
Big oil doesn't manufacture it.
There is no evil CEO in charge of the recipe for oil who is secretly making it somewhere, knowing full well that it pollutes and destroys and kills, because it doesn't do that.
Have you ever stopped to ask yourself, wait, wait a minute now, algae or corn?
What's the difference between all that and oil?
We can't use algae for anything like we can use oil for.
I bring this stuff up because these are techniques and tactics used by the Democrats and the Democrat Party to advance their political agenda, which is the expansion of government and more and more control over individual lives, loss of freedom.
That's what this is all about.
There's no difference in oil and algae.
In terms of being organic, being natural, part of the earth.
The oil was here before we were, and again, there's no recipe for it.
Nobody, no evil scientist manufactured it.
It's not the tool of somebody to wipe people out and to pollute countries in the oceans and kill fish.
It's not, that's not what it's for.
That's not why it was created or designed.
But it's treated that way.
Oil is treated by the American left for the Democrat Party by Democrat politicians as some almost evil invention when it's not.
In fact, it was, if you ask me, it's incredible ingenuity to figure out what all we can do with oil and what it has meant to economic growth and prosperity, wealth creation, liberty, freedom.
It's amazing.
What has come from oil in that regard?
Not from algae.
And if you're going to question anybody, you've got to question the sense of somebody who looks at pond scum and sees a replacement for oil.
That's the oddity.
That's what's weird.
That's what's strange.
Back in just a moment.
Okay, I'm gonna go to the phones.
Well, I intended to go to the phones, but I've got a couple more things here.
Please indulge me.
I appreciate the patience of those of you on hold who are waiting.
First, here's Jay Carney.
This is the White House Press Secretary, an unidentified reporter asking about this at the daily press briefing.
Said there are reports today that the President and Prime Minister Cameron discussed tapping strategic oil reserves.
What status of the White House attempt to tap?
And are you making those, uh having those discussions with other foreign leaders because obviously you want to do this with uh international concurrence?
Jim, the suggestion that energy issues were among the topics discussed by the British Prime Minister and the President.
Should not be surprising.
Energy issues were among the topics discussed in the meetings that they had.
It is inaccurate, as was reported today, that any kind of agreement was reached on a course of action, or that any kind of timetable associated with a course of action was agreed to.
Those reports are are wrong.
They're false.
Those reports are wrong.
They're false.
So Reuters has a big story on it.
National Journal has a story on it.
The Hill.com has a story on it.
A lot of people think that they were given the details.
A lot of state controlled media outlets think they were given specific details of this.
And after they run their stories, Carney's asked about it.
Oh, yeah, they talked.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But no, there's no agreement on any of this.
Very interesting, ladies and gentlemen.
Here's another thing about oil versus algae, terms of a benefit.
We don't have to look at pools of oil.
We gotta look at pools of algae all day long.
You ever go to play golf?
You see pond gum on every lake practically.
You never just see oil.
It's like Benjamin Franklin said about beer.
Oil is proof that God loves us.
That's what Benjamin Franklin said about beer.
Proof that God loves us.
Well, I would say the same thing about oil.
Second thing, before I get to the phones, this is John Merline today of the Investors Business Daily.
Headline, U.S. has sixty times more oil than Obama claims.
And let me give you a couple of pull quotes from the story.
And I just want to tell you something else, too.
With this massive supply of oil, there is no reason for gasoline prices to be going up by the day.
They are only going up because the speculator market and the laws of supply and demand.
We have so much oil that this man is standing in the way of getting.
If we and it's all here, we've got enough for total independence on imported oil.
Now that would shake up world economies.
I mean, if we we stopped buying oil from the Saudis, we're a big customer.
They'd probably find replacements.
We are the Canada is uh our number one source for oil, by the way.
If we stop buying oil from them, they'll just sell to the Chicoms or India.
But here are a couple pull quotes.
A separate RAND corporation study found that about 800 billion barrels of oil shale in Wyoming and neighboring states is technically recoverable, which means it could be extracted using existing technology.
That's more than triple the known reserves in Saudi Arabia in just Wyoming and neighboring states.
And we have the ability to go get it.
The second pull quote, all told, the U.S. has access to 400 billion barrels of crude that could be recovered using existing drilling technologies, according to a government energy report in 2006.
Not some private corporation, not some think tank, but our very own beloved government said.
The Energy Department, 2006, that America has access to 400 billion barrels of crude that could be recovered using existing drilling technologies.
That would be one and a half times the known reserves in Saudi Arabia.
We use nineteen million barrels a day.
We have access to four hundred billion right now.
Eight hundred billion in shale, four hundred billion barrels of crude.
So when you include oil shale, the United States has 1.4 trillion barrels of technically recovered oil, according to the Institute for Energy Research.
That is enough to meet every U.S. oil need for the next 200 years without any imports.
And even this number could be low since such estimates tend to go up over time.
Dan Kish, senior vice president for policy at the Institute for Energy Research said this is not a geological problem, it is a political problem.
We have embargoed our own supplies.
Now the source for this, again, is Investors Business Daily.
The author of the story, John Merlin.
But he is quoting Rand Corporation study, the U.S. government, and the Institute for Energy Research.
So these are shocking numbers.
800 billion barrels of shale, 400 billion barrels of crude, grand total 1.4 trillion barrel, between 1.2 and 1.4 trillion barrels of technically recoverable oil to meet America's needs for the next 200 years without importing a single barrel.
It's there.
Technically recoverable, meaning we've got the means to go get it.
What we don't have is the political will to go get it.
Because this kind of action in the private sector, energy independence having nothing to do with government.
Obama will not permit it, will not allow it.
Mind over chatter.
Rush Limbaugh starting a million conversations.
The most listened to and the most talked about.
In America.
And now finally, I get to fulfill my promise.
We're going to start on the phones in uh in Lewis, Delaware.
This is Mary Ann.
Thanks for waiting, and welcome to the program.
Hi, Rush.
Um, I just was listening to you about the um the the reserves being released.
Now, if he releases that, we have to uh purchase that back for the reserves.
Now, don't we have to purchase that at the market price, and won't that be higher?
Yeah, exactly right.
Whatever we release from the strategic reserve, and again, you you may not have heard this, Marianne, but now the White House is denying this.
Reuters is a big long exclusive, the National Journal, a big long story, the Hill.com, big story.
White House press secretary saying, no, no, no.
These stories are false.
There's no agreement here reached on the release of oil from the strategic reserves.
But you're right, if there is down the road a release of oil from the strategic reserves, it'll have to be replaced.
The strategic reserves will have to be refilled at whatever the current price is.
Could be more expensive than what it was when we bought the oil that uh ends up being released.
So, yeah, it's uh a good likelihood.
There's there's no way to cheat the system on this.
It's gonna come back and bite us one way or the other.
This is a purely, if it happens, it's gonna be a purely political move.
And and the reason, by the way, to get Cameron to go along with it, and maybe other countries, is to mask the political purpose for this.
If you get an ally or two to go along with you, then you can easily make the case this is a coordinated strategic effort based on the national security concerns of us and our allied partners and blah, blah, blah.
Pure and simple.
Ron in Cincinnati.
Hello, sir.
Welcome to the EIB network.
Hello.
so far you're talking about it from a political standpoint, and you're correct.
It absolutely is a political move, but I think that we as conservatives concerned with national security ought to be scrutinizing this from a national security standpoint, and I would argue that it is beyond irresponsible and even incompetent and rises to the level of sinister and even trans uh treasonous uh if you look at it from a standpoint of where we are currently with our standoff with Iran and when since the 70s since that oil reserve was initiated,
have we ever been closer to actually needing it for national security purposes, and here we are, you know, potentially needing that to be all there, and he's ready to use it for his political gain.
I think it's just treason.
He's not the first.
He's not the he did this in June of last year at the same time.
And uh uh Bill Clinton did this for Al Gore in uh in two th in 2000.
Clinton released oil from the strategic reserves.
It's not uncommon for uh this to be used, this kind of maneuver for political purposes, particularly among among Democrats.
Uh I I'm I'm struck now what uh you look, you're absolutely right on the terms of national security aspect of this.
That oil is there for interruptions.
And the Iranians are a wild card.
If they close the Strait of Hormuz, that shuts down a lot of worldwide oil distribution.
There's no question about it.
And it could lead to an interruption.
But I gotta tell you something, folks.
The strategic oil reserves, when full, run the country for thirty-six days.
That's not a long time.
It's about 700 million barrels of oil, but it's not a long time, not at current usage.
I if that interruption ever happened, a significant real interruption requiring the genuine use of the strategic reserves.
I shudder to think what other controls would be slapped on us.
You know, odd day gasoline purchases, limits on the amount of gasoline, um where you can and cannot put your thermostat.
Uh, it it it it it would be drastic.
It would have a profound impact if a genuine interruption in world supplies and distribution took place.
You don't even want to ponder it, which focuses in my mind again the question back on Obama, why not the Keystone Pipeline?
Why not drilling in the Gulf of Mexico in already established proven places?
Why not and war?
Why continue to subject ourselves to this interruption threat when we now know just how much oil we have here.
We've got enough for two hundred years running the country at current levels each day without importing a barrel.
This administration has gone to the bank I don't know how many times on this notion that we have to have alternative fuels for energy independence.
We've got to stop importing oil from no chicks and from the Saudis.
We gotta we we gotta we gotta stop doing all that.
From this administration, yet not one move, not one step is taken to actually affect that, make it happen.
So it's all talk.
And this alternative energy.
Again, as the mayor of Littoralville, when discussing this so-called green energy, cylindra bankrupt, wind energy, solar going nowhere.
The the real flat earther here is Obama.
The real antiquated anti-progress guy is Obama.
There is no business in alternative fuels until we have an alternative fuel that can get a jet airliner off the ground and in the air for 10, 12 hours.
We don't have anywhere near a replacement for oil.
There just isn't.
We don't have an alternative energy that will power a fleet of semi-trailers delivering cargo on the roads and highways.
We don't have an alternative fuel that will power massive cargo ships on the seas.
It's this is all preposterous.
We have exactly what we need to grow our economy to increase the opportunity for prosperity.
We have all the oil that we need.
There's no need for anything new.
Ask yourself that question why do we need something new?
What's better?
Why do we need a replacement just to have a replacement?
Mr. Limbaugh, you obviously haven't been listening.
The reason that we need a thought of tube for oil is it is dirty and it is filthy and is destroying the climate and thus it's destroying the planet is wiping out plant life and animal life throughout the world.
It is not.
None of that is articulated by the new castrati on the left has any basis in fact whatsoever.
The closest thing we have for trucks is natural gas.
And that is still a fossil fuel.
You still gotta drill baby drill to get it.
You have to drill baby drill to get natural gas.
Pure and simple.
I sit here and I'm I I marvel at the ease with which the Democrats and the left create literal false realities.
Not even realities.
They create false illusions.
This may be redundant to even say.
But remember, folks, I opened today's busy broadcasts by telling you that there's abject panic in the White House.
And there is, and Obama's speech to the community college students in Maryland today is evidence of a huge uh defensive posture when it comes to energy and gasoline and oil.
These two polls, the Wall Street Journal, the uh uh uh Washington Post New York Times polls on Monday, the New York Times in particular, the president's approval number at an all-time low in that poll at 41%.
The whole war on women not working.
I'm still here.
You are still here in larger than ever numbers.
Sponsors are still here, and you are still patronizing them.
This guy that called yesterday about his book from Michigan, when he called, he was at 302,000 on Amazon.
At the end of the program yesterday, he was at number four on the fiction list.
Up from 302,000, 30 second thousandth place to fourth place on fiction.
All because of you in this audience patronizing his book.
Just from essentially one non-commercial commercial.
So I was supposed to be gone.
You were supposed to be gone.
Talk radio supposed to be finished.
And as we played for you earlier, Wolf Blitzer wringing his hands together on CNN saying that the real casually here may be Bill Marr.
All the attention focused on what Bill Mars says.
And there probably is going to be a crimp in Bill Mars Act for a while, because everybody's paying attention to it.
Axelrod, Obama's chief campaign strategist was supposed to appear on Mars show soon.
He canceled.
Not going to appear.
So all this attention that they heaped on me has backfired and is focusing on areas that they had.
But I want to illustrate some of this with some poll uh sound bites, particularly on the polling day that will do that after this obscene profit timeout here at the EIB network.
Tuesday night on C SPAN simulcast of Politico.com's coverage of the Mississippi Alabama Hawaii primaries.
The executive editor, Jim Van De Hay, and uh is it Van der High?
Now I never get the pronunciation of his name right.
Vande Hy.
Anyway, Jim is either Vanderheer Vande Hy and the editor-in-chief John Harris are discussing an article looking at recent polling data.
And Vanderhee Vande Hy says, there was a good debate inside of Politico today.
There's a piece that looked at the state of the American voter.
Tell the people what the thesis of the story was, John.
Some of these uh poll results, they just seem stupid.
So I asked Alex Burns to uh say, why don't you do a piece looking at the question of whether voters are stupid, and a lot of the things that they say in these uh polls are just plain stupid.
And uh Alex Warm to the assignment, and he wrote this, actually found a number of good voices from pollsters who say, Yeah, that's the first thing you earn as a pollster.
Voters are stupid.
It meant that look often they're uh expressing their opinions in a context of ignorance.
Now, isn't this fascinating?
We've got two polls which show the bottom falling out of Obama.
The war on women not work.
In fact, I'm an army of one in the war of women.
I am still standing.
But speaking of books, by the way, there's a book written about me.
If you're new to this program and you want to get as close to the truth as anything in public uh been published, is there's a book uh called An Army of One, and it's it's about me.
It's by a guy named Zev Chaffitz.
And it's also available at Amazon and any number of places, an Army of One.
And that's his title.
That's not my ego.
Uh I had no choice.
In the title, I could have agreed, disagree, couldn't have, wouldn't have mattered.
That was his title.
Here we have two polls which show the Obama trailing in women in the Washington Post poll, he lost four points after this whole attempt to create the phony Republican war on women via contraception abortion.
And so now these guys are looking at the people of participating polls, and for the first time.
Do you notice the derision with which Harris uses the word stupid?
These people are just stupid here.
Listen to Soundbite one again and pay attention for that.
Some of these uh poll results, they just seem stupid.
So I asked Alex Burns to uh say, Why don't you do a piece looking at the question of whether voters are stupid?
And a lot of the things that they say in these uh polls are just plain stupid.
And it's warm to the aside.
Stupid.
He is people are just stupid.
They're talking about their own polls.
And later on, he says, yeah.
It they meant like often they're expressing their opinions in a context of ignorance.
Well, why don't you educate them with your polling question then?
If they're so stupid, why don't you educate them in the form of the question?
So we voters are too stupid to appreciate all the great things Obama's done.
We're too stupid to appreciate the brilliant political ploy he played last week.
We're too stupid.
We didn't have the sense to sp to understand it and play along with it and applaud him for a phony, non-existent Republican war on women.
I just find it fascinating.
After all of these years of polls, and these guys have used polls to make news not reflect it.
They have used these polls to create public opinion, and all of a sudden, two bad polls on the same day, and the respondents are stupid.
Late yesterday afternoon on MSNBC.
The guest was Georgetown University professor Michael Eric Dyson.
And they were talking about Obama's recent poll numbers.
We have two sound bites from Michael Eric Dyson.
We've seen a slew of polls With varying results on the president's approval rating from 41%, as you know, to 50.
Are the polls broken?
That's the host on MSNBC.
Are the polls broken?
The president's approval number is voting precipitously.
From 50 to 41%.
Are the polls broken, Mr. Dyson?
And here was his answer.
Yeah, it's very difficult to tell.
The mechanics of trying to determine whether or not Obama is successful is not about the math, it's about the chemistry.
And so here I think what's going on is that Obama strikes a nerve in the heart of the American middle states as well as some of those states that are significantly blue.
What?
Did you understand that?
The question was, are the poles broken?
And well, you know, the American middle states, some of those states that are significantly blue, uh, that's what's going on here.
Obama's striking a nerve there.
Huh?
Uh Professor Dyson, you might want to ask MSNBC to go back on and try another take of that.
Folks, um, it's not that the polls are broken.
These polls are no business, not that they're broken.
Maybe what is going on?
Maybe it's that the numbers are so bad, the media cannot manipulate them enough to hide the decline taking place with Obama.
Maybe that's what's going on.
Numbers are so bad they can't manipulate them enough and still maintain credibility after they do that.
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