Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Hi, folks.
How are you?
Greetings to you, music lovers, thrill seekers, conversationalists all across the fruited plane.
The most listened to radio talk show in America is back on the air.
Live from the EIB Southern Command, which is also the headquarters of the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
An actual institute here, folks.
Institutes.
A lot of people think you hear institute, you think insane asylum, but not here.
And I'm in the distinguished, prestigious Attila the Hun chair, senior fellow, all that, of the largest free education institution ever.
There are no graduates.
There are no degrees because the learning never stops.
Great to have you here.
Telephone number is 800-282-2882, the email address, El Rushbo at EIBnet.com.
Last week, folks, I told you that two If-By-T Grand Prize sweepstakes winners were here at the Southern Command.
We had eight of them in here.
We had them in here for a day and a half.
They came in, they watched the program.
We took them to dinner at the Flagler Steakhouse over at the Breakers, and they got a bonus.
Snerdley, you don't know this.
But I went over there, I crashed dinner.
You know, these people, they were shocked that I would walk into a restaurant alone without security.
They were blown away.
And I gave them all iPhones, iPhone 4Ss.
And they went away.
Anyway, we've got the whole point of reminding you this is that it's tea season again, and we are going to be kicking off with a special promotion called the Ride of a Lifetime Sweepstakes in honor of Paul Revere Day.
And I'm going to have the details later in the program as it unfolds.
But basically what this is, is a trip to Boston for two winners of four each, four people times two.
We don't send two people someplace.
We send four in case somebody wants to take the kids or the family or whatever.
In fact, you can see all about this now at 2IFBT.com if you want to go there now and look at it.
But details are coming.
And there's some other winners' prizes as well, in addition to the two grand prize.
Yeah, Boston's a great place, a tourist place to go around.
Yeah, it is.
Catherine and I were there last summer for Mrs. Kraft's funeral, and we spent the weekend.
And that was my first Apple store.
No, we didn't.
We drove by a lot of places.
We didn't.
It was the hottest weekend of the year.
We had a nice hotel, and I demanded that we take advantage of it.
But we did walk down the street to a pub and then went to the Apple Store.
It was my first Apple store on Boylston.
But no, historically, founding of the country, we're trying to save the country.
Boston's the place to send people.
Absolutely.
That's why we're doing it.
Rush Revere, sending people to do Paul Revere's ride.
Anyway, I have details on this all coming up.
Also, if you will pardon me, a little housekeeping or a personal thing here.
Yesterday afternoon in Washington at the Hudson Institute, also not an insane asylum.
This is a conservative think tank.
They had a panel discussion on improving America's energy security.
And on the panel was Bob Lutz from General Motors, who said this.
My plea to the right, and I have written emails to Rush Lindbaugh, who likes to describe me as my good friend Bob Lutz, although I never get an email response from him.
All of these people I find frustrate me in the unwillingness to accept that electrification of the mobile sector is a good thing to do and in the national interest, whether you're a conservative or a liberal.
Okay, now we can talk about the electrification of the mobile sector.
For those of you in Rio Linda, do you know what that means?
You think they do the electrification of the mobile sector?
Think Chevy Volt.
The electrification is in electric cars with batteries that need to be charged using coal, which, by the way, speaking of that, Greenpeace just dumped on Apple today because they're powering their data centers with coal.
And of course, coal is like oil.
It's a fossil fuel and therefore it's horrible.
It is to be outlawed.
And it's ridiculous and it's crazy.
Anyway, we'll get into whether or not the electrification of the mobile sector is a good thing or not.
I just want to say Bob Lutz is a friend of mine.
I met Bob Lutz at the annual, in fact, it's well, cigar dinner.
The Night of the Century cigar dinner is done every year.
Marvin Shankin, Cigar Ficionado magazine and wine spectator, we do this big dinner every year.
It's a black tie thing.
It's a fundraiser for prostate cancer.
Michael Milken shows up and it's a always at the Four Treasons in New York City, seasons, four seasons in New York City and in the pool room.
And it's just, it's a wonderful night and it raises a lot of money.
And one year, Lutz was there because a lot of the people that advertise in Marvin's magazines show up and a lot of other people.
Lutz was there.
And that's where I first met him.
We had a great time, great conversation.
I have since been given a tour of General Motors by Lutz.
And I considered us to be friends because of that first night at the cigar dinner.
I just want to say I have not gotten any of Bob's emails.
I reply to emails.
I don't talk on the phone.
Emails my wife.
That's how I communicate with people.
I don't use the phone.
I'm under duress.
You know, if I'm told I have to talk to somebody on the phone, it can ruin the 30 minutes leading up to it.
I so despise it.
I turn off the ringers on all the phones at home.
I can't even stand to hear a phone ring because there's never good news.
Never.
The phone never is anything other than a problem or somebody wanting something or somebody wanting me to buy something or whatever.
I just hate it.
So I live on email.
what's so if it's true what um what do you mean bill collectors don't call me Bill collectors do call me.
Oh, I can tell you a, I mean, if I wanted to get personal, I could tell you something that really irritates me about that.
Because it's an ongoing thing.
And I'm sure it's political.
Yeah, but there's always, there's nothing ever good on the other end of a phone call, ever.
So anyway, my point is I use email and I respond to email and I haven't gotten it, even Bob Lutz.
So, Bob, I don't know what email address you're using, but I haven't gotten it.
I'll be glad to talk about the electrification of the mobile sector as a good thing and in the national interest, whether you're a conservative or liberal, anytime you want.
My whole problem with this is that it also carries with it something else, and that is that oil is bad, and I don't believe that.
Just today, a Boeing 747 flew from the Kennedy Space Center to Washington, D.C.
And on its back was a 200,000-pound space shuttle.
Now, stop and think of this, folks.
A Boeing 747, I don't know how many of you ever think about airplanes and what it takes to get one in the air and how much they weigh and what kind of power it takes to get those things flying fast enough so that the aerodynamics of the airfoil on the wing create the difference in air pressure that some people call lift.
It gets those things off the ground and through the air fast enough not to crash, fast enough to defy gravity.
I don't know if people stop and think about the power that is required for that.
It's something that everybody just takes for granted.
Airplanes roll down the runway, they lift off, they go, and they land.
Sometimes pilots go nuts, but most of the time that doesn't happen, and then you land.
And before you get on the airplane, if you're a woman, you get padded down.
You may as well show up nude for the TSA people to have their jollies.
But the airplane lifts off.
Now, this Boeing 747 is strong enough and powerful enough to put a space shuttle.
Now, it's stripped of all its gear.
It's a shell, but it's still 200,000 pounds, and it's on the back on the top of that 747.
And it flew to Washington.
This was the shuttle discovery.
And when it got to Washington, did a bunch of flyovers, it flew over the Capitol.
It flew over the White House.
It flew over downtown Washington.
They relaxed the airspace restrictions.
And I got a picture here, Frank Love, of the 747, the NASA 747 with the shuttle.
And it's in the sky in the background of a picture of the White House.
And I thought, how perfectly fitting the regime that shuts down the program, the regime that shuts down the shuttle program and the manned spaceflam, here's a picture of the last shuttle or one of the last shuttles.
Well, I might as well put a house on a Boeing 747, fly that over the White House because the housing market's going the same way as the shuttle.
But that's another point.
My point is there is nothing, there is not a battery in the world that would get that 747 even down the runway at 30 miles an hour without needing a charge.
There isn't a battery that would get that airplane off the ground.
It's not even feasible.
I have no problem batteries.
My whole life is recharging the damn things.
My three iPads, my two iPhones.
I got battery chargers here and there.
I got electrical outlets.
I got battery charger cables in my briefcase.
All I do is recharge batteries.
I'm fully aware of the electrification of the life sector.
But I also know that there's nothing wrong with oil.
And there's nothing wrong with gasoline.
And there's no substitute for either yet.
If people want to go buy an electric car that gets 40 miles to the charge, and then you have to turn on your gasoline-powered engine to finish your trip, go ahead.
If you want a car that costs so much money, the government's got to pay you something back to buy, go ahead.
I'm for freedom.
I don't want to limit anybody's choices.
But don't tell me that's the only option I'm going to have.
Don't tell me I can't go buy a car that gets 10 miles a gallon if I want to and if I'm willing to pay for it, which I do.
That's the problem with this.
The problem with all this is that this electric stuff is being presented as a savior of something, and we don't need saving from oil.
And we don't need saving from gasoline.
And if we didn't have either, we wouldn't have anywhere near the lifestyle or the prosperity or the standard of living that we've got now.
If we had to get food, for example, where it goes, using nothing but electricity or horse and buggy, I hate to tell you what the price would be, and I hate to tell you how limited the supply would be.
What do you think got us to the moon?
What do you think it was that powered those shuttles to the International Space Show?
There's all kinds of reasons for advancement in energy technology.
I am not opposed to any of it.
But Bob, Mr. Lutz, the problem is not me.
The problem is that the pro-electric car crowd are the people making this political.
The people pushing anti-just today, Obama, where is it?
He had a campaign appearance in the Rose Garden.
They say it's a presidential appearance.
It's a campaign appearance.
It's an election year.
Obama had a campaign appearance in the Rose Garden an hour or so ago.
And he promised to crack down on the manipulation in the oil market, driving up the price of gasoline.
He promised the same exact thing almost one year ago to this day.
The New York Times is ecstatic.
There's a big story here.
Obama cracking down on big oil.
They're the people making this political.
Obama and the leftists are trying to guilt people who don't know any better that the vehicles, the cars, and all the other appliances that they use that rely on oil are somehow sinful.
I'm not interested in rolling back my standard of living.
I'm not interested in rolling back American progress.
I'm not interested in that.
I don't make anything political.
I come here every day.
I look at the news and I react to people.
The American left, Barack Obama, American liberalism is nothing but ideology.
It is nothing but politics.
Their issues are not rooted in science.
The electric car is not about saving the planet.
The electric car is not about cleaner energy.
The electric car is not about cleaner air.
The electric car is about taking away choices from the American people about what they want to drive.
The electric car is about bigger government.
They are the ones making this political.
And thus, they have to be responded to in a political way.
So Obama, he said today that he really means it this time, because he said last year he's going to look into these speculators.
He really means it this time.
In fact, he said he's going to spend $42 million to make sure these speculators don't get away with this anymore.
Now, for the life of me, I can't figure out what he's going to do with $42 million other than buy off some speculators.
How in the world is spending $42 million to keep a sharp eye on speculators?
Why is it even necessary?
All you need is a couple of eyes.
This is absurd.
Maybe Obama is going to put a $42 million bounty on the speculators.
But it just makes me wonder if Obama won't go just Hugo Chavez on big oil after he gets re-elected, just nationalize them.
Why not?
It's what he told, what's his face, Medvedev.
Dimitri, I need flexibility.
I'll have much more flexibility after the election.
Tell Vlad that once I get elected, I can then get rid of the nuclear weapons, and you will have them all.
Now, one of the specific things Obama said he's going to do is increase the penalty for companies engaging in market manipulation.
The penalty is going to go from $1 million to $10 million.
I'm pretty sure this is only going to apply to oil companies, green companies like Solyndra don't have anything about because A, they can't stay in business.
I got to take a break.
We'll be back here just like somebody remind me to tell.
You got to hear this.
What happened to me driving into work today with my iPhone?
I was dictating some stuff, responding to emails on the way into work.
And you've got to remind me to tell you what happened.
This is the most unreal thing that's ever happened.
You will not believe it.
Don't forget to have me do that.
No, no, I don't have enough time to do it now.
This shuttle, the combination 747 and the shuttle, those two things together weighed more than 698,000 pounds at takeoff.
Folks, I don't think people stop.
So much of our technological advancement is just taken for granted.
There's not a battery that would get that 747 and that shuttle even to the runway on a full charge, much less at speed to take off and go anywhere.
There's not a battery that'll get an ocean liner out of port.
What are we talking about here?
There's no replacement for oil.
There's no substitute for it.
There's nothing on the horizon.
This is nothing but left-wing politics, pure and simple.
And it's about what all left-wing politics is about.
Expanding government, total control over people and their freedom.
The free market, not me, the free market has rejected the Chevrolet Volt, even though the Chevrolet Volt has had billions of dollars in backing from the government.
Right now, consumers don't want it.
Now, Bob Lutz blames me, in part, because I have been critical of it.
And he thinks those of you in this audience will not go buy the car if I've said what I think about it.
And that's patently ridiculous.
You are going to buy what you want to buy.
You're not mind-numbered robots here.
I'm not some Svengali pied-pipering you into not doing or doing things.
But I'm just going to tell you, this whole idea of replacing oil is akin to taking away our power, folks, as a nation and as individuals.
Furthermore, it is intellectually bankrupt.
Oil is such old news.
Why?
Because somebody on the left decided oil's bad.
Algae somehow is better.
Oil is as natural as soil.
Oil is as natural as diamonds.
Oil is as natural as corn coming out of the ground.
Oil is as organic as anything else, and so are we.
But to listen to people like Obama and the American left, the problem with the planet is human beings and oil, fossil fuels, coal, and this kind of thing.
It's absolutely absurd.
It's intellectually insulting.
And the fact that it emotionally appeals to people scares me.
698,000 pounds.
Do you realize the power in those jet engines?
Necessary.
How about the power to launch the shuttle to the space station?
Now, if there is anybody in this audience listening that writes for an Apple or high-tech blog, or if there is anybody listening to this program that works for or at Apple Incorporated, you have to hear what happened to me this morning.
Sadly, I can't prove it because, well, you'll hear why in a moment.
I was so discombobulated by what happened that I didn't save what showed up on my iPhone.
Now, let me describe my setup for you.
I have a car that has a Bluetooth mating system in it.
So my iPhone is paired with the Bluetooth system, which means that I can use hands-free operation.
Everybody does this probably.
No big deal there.
I also drive around with a Verizon LTE hotspot because Verizon's turned on LTE here, which is 20 megabytes down.
So I don't use AT ⁇ T's 4G.
I don't use cellular when I'm driving around.
I use Wi-Fi.
This hotspot from Verizon converts the LTE signal to Wi-Fi, and that's how I connect the iPhone.
So my system is my phone paired with the car's Bluetooth provided by the manufacturer.
And it is also connected via Wi-Fi to a Verizon LTE hotspot.
Now, the way Apple iPhone dictation works is you hit the microphone button on your keyboard, and that immediately establishes an online connection with Apple servers somewhere.
The dictation does not occur.
The translation does not occur in the phone.
What you say is transmitted at whatever connection speed you're using, 3G, 4G, or Wi-Fi, to Apple servers, wherever they are.
The speech is then transcribed to text by a company called Nuance, which makes dragon dictation.
And that's the voice-to-text aspect of Siri in the iPhone.
So you say testing 123 and hit the microphone button.
That ends the connection.
Apple's server, no, it doesn't end the connection.
Apple servers then transcribe it and send it back to you and it displays on your screen.
This happens if you have a fast connection.
That's why I use the LTE hotspot.
This happens within a second and a half.
What I've said shows back up on my iPhone a second or iPad a second and half after I say it.
Now, the way my Bluetooth setup in the car works is if I'm listening to the radio, for example, the moment I hit the microphone on the iTunes, on the iPhone, the radio is muted because a phone call is being made, essentially.
The phone system via Bluetooth is used to send my voice transcription out to Apple and back.
When it comes back and the connection is finished, then the audio from the radio resumes.
Up until today, it worked flawlessly.
The dictation, sometimes it's 100% accurate, sometimes 95%.
It's always close enough to just go ahead and hit the send button, except sometimes it doesn't get proper names.
After the hotspot established its connection with the iPhone, I've got Wi-Fi going, everything's hunky-dory.
I'm about maybe a quarter of a mile from home on the way into work.
I attempt dictation and nothing happens.
I hit the microphone button and I get the three beeps and no connection, not working.
I said, oh, damn it, the system's down.
Something's wrong with the servers.
But I keep trying.
The third attempt, I was trying to respond to some stuff Catherine had sent me.
She needed an answer on some stuff.
So I said whatever it was my answer was the third time.
And what came back to me, this is what you're not going to believe, what showed up on my iPhone was, Obama's minions are taking over and there's nothing you can do about it.
And I hadn't said anything like that.
The audio on the radio did not unmute.
The audio on the radio never came back.
The whole system was discombobulated.
So I switched from satellite to AM just to see if there was something wrong with the satellite signal.
And AM came in fine.
So I kept an eye and I tried it again.
I deleted that.
I did not save that.
I thought, man, something's really.
So I responded to Catherine again.
I don't even remember what I was, but I was answering questions about some stuff we've got going on this weekend.
The second thing, and I said it again, same thing I'd said the first time.
What came back to me the second time was totally unrelated to anything I had said, talking about wind power and Obama, and you don't have a chance.
I am not making this up.
And I said to myself, you know, somebody's hacked Apple servers.
I'm going to get in there.
I said, I can't wait to get to work and fire up some of these Apple blogs because I bet this has been going on all morning.
And I'll bet you that's a big story that Apple's servers have been hacked.
So I tried it again.
The third thing that came back had nothing to do with politics.
It had nothing to do with Obama.
It had nothing to do with any of them.
But it was not any close to what.
Then I started doing testing 123, and I would get back four sentences that did not have testing or 123 in them.
So I didn't save any of these.
I wasn't thinking.
I was so curious that I didn't send them.
It didn't make any sense.
If I would have sent these things to Catherine, she would have thought.
I'm losing my mind even more than I already have.
I waited.
I'm not through with the story.
So I get here.
This happens two more times.
I get here.
The first thing I do when I get into the studio on our network system is start dictating and it's flawless.
It's perfect.
It was only in my car that this happened.
It was only with my Verizon LTE hotspot and my Bluetooth.
That's the only, I got in here and I used our Wi-Fi network and dictation worked perfectly.
It's been working perfectly all morning.
It was only in the car.
I got so busy, I didn't have a chance to go back out to the car and try it again.
I'll try it later when I leave.
So I sent this story.
I typed this story I just told you and I sent it to a bunch of computer people.
I know, what could possibly explain this?
And the answers I got back ranged from, you've been hacked, somebody got into your car, somebody's tampered with the Bluetooth module, somebody's done something.
They're sending you a message that they can do it.
Or Your Bluetooth module is so totally defective that you need a new one, or there's something wrong with the LTE hotspot.
There was no answer that was satisfactory.
This never happened.
But that first message that came, Obama's minions are taking over.
As I say, I can't prove this because I didn't keep the transcriptions.
I deleted them.
I don't even know if I actually deleted them.
I just didn't send them.
They're not on the phone.
I went and looked.
So when I finish here this afternoon and am on the way out, I'm going to try this again.
I haven't changed any circumstances.
I'm not charging the hotspot.
I'm not going to switch out the Bluetooth unit.
I'm not going to change.
What I might do is turn off the hotspot if it happens again and just use the ATT4G and see if it happens that way.
But to understand this, again, when you use dictation on your iPhone or iPad, the phone's not doing anything.
What you say gets transmitted to Apple servers, and then there's software on those servers made by Nuance, which does the voice translation to text, and that gets sent back to your phone in whatever application you're using.
Email, message, whatever has a keyboard, you can use dictation.
So what do you think of that, Snerdley?
What could possibly explain this?
Could it be that somebody at Apple can ID my phone, knows when I'm voice transcribing, and can send something back?
I have no idea.
I am not a power user in the sense, I mean, I'm probably a consumer power user, but I'm not a power user in terms of people that can use terminal, write code, all this kind of stuff.
I don't haven't gotten into that much.
But another theory was that I don't have any other theories.
But I sent this off to two people who might, and none of them could believe it.
But they then started trying to explain it to me.
What various things could exist to explain this.
But it was the first two that came back that specifically mentioned Obama.
So there's that.
The Martins didn't hack anybody.
Snerdley just asked me, that grandfather and grandmother couple, they were driving around in, I think, either Tampa, Jacksonville, somewhere.
And like everybody, they had a cell phone radio in their Cadillac.
They were able to monitor cell phone calls like a police scanner.
There's monitored cell signals and frequencies.
And they overheard Newt having conversation with John Boehner back in the 90s.
And this grand couple, big Democrat activists, thought that they were in on history and they sent that, they recorded, they had a recorder in their car along with the cell phone radio in their car.
And they recorded it and they sent it to the New York Times who published it.
But they didn't hack anything.
They just had a radio that was able to monitor those frequencies.
Well, I know that was years.
That's like 20 years ago when that happened.
And they've upgraded.
But the first thing I thought of was somebody hacked Apple servers.
Because it's impossible for Dick.
If you use, for example, if you have drag and dictate on your iPhone or your iPad, your iPad or iPhone is not, the hardware software inside the phone is not doing the voice-to-text translation.
That's happening off-site via servers and comes back to your phone via network.
ID by phone number, email address.
With the iMessage program, you can set five different email addresses that people can reach you on.
But in this case, it would be what would it be?
This would be IP, because this is Wi-Fi.
This is cell.
Could be phone number, combination of phone number and IP address.
Who knows?
As I say, I'm not that much of a power user to be able to explain that.
But this didn't happen yesterday when I parked the car in the garage.
The only thing that happened to the car yesterday was it got washed.
Had the car washed yes at home.
Now, now, I was in the library most night working.
Somebody could have come in, got the car, drove it somewhere.
I would never know.
The garage is about a half mile from my library.
Just kidding.
But I didn't check the security cameras.
I don't know if anything happened to the car.
I don't know if it left the garage and came back.
I don't know.
I have no clue.
And of course, if I start asking, I know what the answer is.
I'm like, no, no, didn't touch it.
But the most common suggestion I got from the people I sent it to was that you've got a Bluetooth problem here.
There's something wrong with Bluetooth.
That may be.
But for Obama and his minions to end up in a translated voice-to-text message when I didn't say Obama, I didn't say minions.
I didn't say anything about any of that.
The dictation's never been that far off.
I don't take super secret phone calls.
That's the point I don't make.
This wasn't super secret.
It was just a Catherine.
It happens all the time.
Anyway, I must take a brief timeout.
We'll do it.
And if it happens afternoon, I'm going to keep whatever it throws back at me.
Now, I won't be able to prove what I say.
That's lost to the ether.
But I will be able to show whatever it thinks I said in terms of the translation.
It comes back.
I want to go to Audio Soundbites, Obama and the Rose Garden today, campaign appearance.
And another attack here on big oil and the speculators.
Here we go.
As I've said repeatedly, the problem is we use more than 20% of the world's oil and we only have 2% of the world's proven oil reserves.
Oh, geez.
And if we drilled every square inch of this country right now, we'd still have to rely disproportionately on other countries for their oil.
That means we pay more at the pump every time there's instability in the Middle East or growing demand in countries like China and India.
Now, I know a lot of you, and by the way, we now have the month of March ratings data to prove this.
But there are many of you listening to this program for the first time or have come back after not being here for a while.
I just have to tell you and beg the indulgence of the everyday audience, none of what he just said is true.
None of it.
We have much more than 2% of the world's proven reserves.
We have enough oil.
It's been discovered.
And by the way, this requires, this definition requires oil has not only been discovered, but we have the technology to go get it.
We have not made the commitment to get it yet, but we have the technology, fracking, shale, any number of ways.
It's there.
We have more oil under the ground here than is in Saudi Arabia.
This 20% of the world's oil or 2% of the world's population, he got the numbers wrong.
The point that the president's trying to make here is that we're greedy and selfish.
We are but 2% of the world's population, but we're using 25% of the world's oil.
And that's horrible.
What means the rest of the world has to bend over and grab the ankles while we take what they have.
This is a requirement for leftists to lay a guilt trip on everybody.
Lie.
Make up this notion that we're a superpower, yeah, but we're greedy and we're selfish.
We don't share with people.
We've taken what other nations have, and they're poor as a result.
There's nothing, not one statistic.
I think he sounded bored as heck reading this statistic.
It's like he's getting tired of reading this lie about how drilling for oil has no relation to gasoline prices, but he does it anyway.
That's another thing.
The idea that we may as well then shut down all oil drilling.
If oil's bad and if it's destroying the planet and polluting the air, and the amount of oil we have here that we drill for doesn't affect supply and doesn't affect price, then we may as well shut it down.
That'd be the logical conclusion of what Obama's saying here.
But I'm just telling you, if you're new to the program, none of what he said in that sound like is true.
Not a word of it.
Get this, folks.
The London Olympics organizers have asked the WHO to do a concert to close the games.
They sent out invitations, including to Keith Moon, who died 34 years ago.
The London Olympics organizers want the WHO to wrap up the games.