RUSH: Michael in Wilmington, Delaware, nice to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: How you doing, Rush? And God bless you.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: You’re my hero —
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: — and the last person I voted for that lost an election was Barry Goldwater. That gives you an idea of how old I am.
RUSH: It also gives us an idea that you make the right call.
CALLER: Absolutely.
RUSH: Does that mean you voted for Clinton?
CALLER: (laughing) No, I never voted for Clinton. I meant to say the last Republican guy.
RUSH: Oh, okay, all right, all right, all right.
CALLER: Rush, listen, everything you just said, I agree with, with this race, with Jews, I mean I am a Jew, and I know they’re not going to vote for Obama, but the point is this.
RUSH: Really? This is the first I’ve heard of this. Why? Because I thought liberals were liberals first?
CALLER: Because my whole family lives in Ft. Lauderdale and they’ve been voting liberal Democrats their entire life, but they will not, they will not vote for a black man. I don’t want to — that’s just the way it is.
RUSH: It has nothing to do with his foreign policy, the people he’s cozying up to?
CALLER: No, no, no, no.
RUSH: Is this racist?
CALLER: That’s what they are, that’s the bottom line.
RUSH: They’re racial. So you’re talking about members of your family that you know intimately.
CALLER: I believe so, yes.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: Now, listen, Rush —
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: — that’s not the point of my call.
RUSH: Powerful point, though, you have to admit.
CALLER: Well, it’s a point.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: It’s accurate. I’m not denying the point that you just made.
RUSH: Okay.
CALLER: I can’t tell you how the gays are going to vote, I don’t know that.
RUSH: No gays in your family to call on?
CALLER: No, we don’t have any gays.
RUSH: Okay.
CALLER: Rush, I’ve been in business for 30 years. I’ve been successful. I have been delivering food to the state of Delaware economically, spectacularly, winning awards. My credentials are impeccable. I can’t bring the food any more to the table at the price I’m bringing it because of Delmarva Power & Light, which is really not their fault, it’s our governor. It’s Joe Biden. These people are out of their minds, Rush. We don’t need free health care. That is not the problem in this country. We’re being crippled with energy. We can’t bring oil out of ANWR, we can’t drill off your estate at Palm Beach. No one wants to look at a derrick.
RUSH: I wouldn’t mind.
CALLER: I know you wouldn’t mind. But there’s something crazy taking place. The price of my kilowatt is a dime because they want to take the CO2 and put it into a cave and save it. They can deliver it at three cents. American Electric Power has been in business for a hundred years. They know what to do. Governors telling them what to do, how to build the plant, not to use coal, demonizing oil, a woman named Jane Fonda sits on a cannon and stops an entire world from delivering nuclear power with this movie she made —
RUSH: Exactly right. In fact, I watched a little bit of that yesterday. It was on HDNet movie —
CALLER: How does this happen, Rush? How does this happen?
RUSH: Fear.
CALLER: How do intelligent Americans allow — why can’t we build nuclear? We can create 40,000 jobs by bringing oil in from ANWR. We bring it by a pipeline, not with a tanker, no spill, no Exxon Valdez. What is going on, Rush?
RUSH: What’s going on, it is —
CALLER: Twenty-nine states with 29 different grades of gasoline? We’re paying over three dollars for regular. Rush, I don’t care. I got the money. I drive only 12-cylinder cars.
RUSH: Thank God.
CALLER: I wouldn’t put my grandchildren in no little mini-boxes. But I’m not talking about me, and I’m not talking about you. I’m talking about working America. They think they need free health care? They need two dollar a gallon gas, this country will explode. They’re heating their houses. You think there’s a subprime crisis, Rush? Yes, there’s a subprime crisis. That’s not the problem. People bought a house they thought their energy was going to be $250. They get a bill, it’s $385. They go to the gas station, they spend another $40, so they stop coming out to my restaurant. They stop buying 24/7. They don’t buy a newsletter. Rush, there is a domino effect taking place. It’s energy. We bring down the price of a plasma television set. I bought one for $10,000, a Fujitsu. It’s now $1,100.
RUSH: I’ve been there.
CALLER: We bring down the price of phones. We bring down the price of computers. Why do we bring up the price of energy? Why do you allow the Sierra Club to run this country? What is going on? These people are walking through the country and telling us to go on a bicycle? I need Larry David to drive around for four years in Curb Your Enthusiasm with a Prius? What is going on, Rush? We’re out of our mind. People are calling up and saying he’s liberal, he’s conservative, he’s this, he’s that. They’re driving themselves into a barrel. They’re not going to get out, the Bo Snerdleys of the world. I’m talking about young couples. I’ve got two boys. They’re trying to bring children up. They’re getting energy bills that are knocking their homes out of sight. Nothing, nothing is more important than to bring — energy is what makes this world tick. We’re beholden to Chavezes and Castros and Putins; we want to go dig here, dig there. Can you dig in Alaska? Oh, no, we’re going to kill a caribou. This is nonsense. This doesn’t make any sense. How do we allow these idiots to get on television and talk about foreign oil? There is no — Rush, you have got to lead a charge. It is not that McCain is reaching over the aisle, he’s a global warmer!
RUSH: I know!
CALLER: Rush, if this man gets in, he will not help the American family. If Obama gets in, there will be no American family. Rush, the point is energy. You’ve gotta get the bureaucrats out of the energy business. I know American Electric Power. I knew in 1980 that this country would never drill for oil again. I went out and bought Esso before it was Exxon. I bought the stock. I get my gasoline for free. I get dividends from ExxonMobil. They’re a spectacular corporation. Rush, they have 27 energy projects going in the world today, zero in North America.
RUSH: I know.
CALLER: Why? Why is this allowed? How do we stay captured by a moron who wants to save an owl, a fish, a bird, a dog, a snake, a rat? What about my grandkids? What is going on Rush?
RUSH: Answer your own question — you’ve got a lot of answers. I know you’ve got the answer here. Tell me what the answer is. What’s going on, how did it happen? Why is the Sierra Club running the country?
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: Why is the Sierra Club trying to put your SUV in the junk pile?
CALLER: Correct.
RUSH: You know the answers to these questions.
CALLER: They hate America? Could that be it?
RUSH: Well, it’s —
CALLER: Could Larry David hate America?
RUSH: Well, Larry David is a willing idiot. He’s a dupe. Most of the people that are running around spouting all this stuff are willing, useful idiots who want meaning in their lives, they want to matter, they want to think that what they’re doing is helping somebody or something. They have been gotten to by their guilt. People are running around with the guilt of prosperity or the guilt of whatever. They’ve successfully made the energy movement a religious movement, and it’s got every tenet of every —
CALLER: How do we stop it?
RUSH: You stop accepting the liberal premise of every policy idea that comes down the pike, and when they say we can’t drill in the Gulf of Mexico, we say, ‘Why not?’
CALLER: Why not?
RUSH: What’s going to happen to us —
CALLER: I don’t understand —
RUSH: We need to confront ’em. You’re the same people who are whining and moaning about our dependence on other people’s oil and you won’t let us go get our own, what do you really want? Do you really want the people of this country impoverished so they’ll have to turn to you for what they need?
CALLER: It’s going to happen.
RUSH: It is happening.
CALLER: Rush, it’s going to happen.
RUSH: It is happening.
CALLER: I got an energy bill in my restaurant just last week, $11,600 to heat my restaurant and to supply natural gas to my kitchen. The bill four years ago was $5,500. Now, Rush, what am I supposed to do? I gotta pass this along so the people who love my restaurant, who are eating there wonderfully for years and years and years. I don’t want to charge them more. What can I do? I don’t have tablecloths. I don’t have wine stewards going around. I have a family restaurant. I cook my own food, everything from scratch. I do everything I can to save the dollar to give the customer an absolute, wonderful experience. I need an idiot — I need a governor to tell me that she can’t build a nuclear power plant on the Delaware River? She can bring power to this state so cheap, but she’s afraid that the power plant’s going to blow up or she has water. She has chickens down there on the —
RUSH: Not afraid of that.
CALLER: — in the southern part of Delaware?
RUSH: She’s not afraid of that. She’s afraid of losing the election.
CALLER: Yeah. She won’t get any money from the Sierra Club. They gave her a million dollars to get reelected.
RUSH: It’s not just that. They’ll actively campaign against her.
CALLER: Why does Joe Biden care if I get gasoline for two dollars? Why does this man vote against ANWR 16 years? The man has cast 16 votes against drilling. Why does he care?
RUSH: Follow the money!
CALLER: All about money.
RUSH: It’s all about money. Follow the money and the amount of money it takes for these clowns to stay in power and whose hands they have to grease.
CALLER: If we take the monkey off our back of energy, and deliver it like we deliver a TV, deliver it like we deliver a computer, allow these brilliant, brilliant people —
RUSH: Exactly right.
CALLER: — who run these power plants —
RUSH: I made this point in the first hour. The entrepreneurism and the energy production of this country, we cannot survive on conversation alone, we cannot, we will not grow. And, by the way, without additional production, we’re not going to increase supply, which is not going to bring down price. Price is going up because of limited supply. We’re importing, importing 13% of our gasoline today, importing. Not just oil. By the way, wait ’til you people see what the price of food’s going to have happen to it in the near future with all this biofuel garbage going on out there. You just wait. In fact, the Financial Times today, with a story: ‘When William Lapp, of US-based consultancy Advanced Economic Solutions, took the podium at the annual US Department of Agriculture conference, the sentiment was already bullish for agricultural commodities boosted by demand from the biofuels industry and emerging countries.’ Oh, yeah, there’s so much demand now for these agricultural products because of biofuels. ‘He added a twist — that rising agricultural raw material prices would translate this year into sharply higher food inflation.’
So, Michael, not only are your energy prices going up, your wholesale food prices are going to go up, too. At some point you’re going to have to start passing it along. But this is going to happen and materialize at the grocery store as well, too, not just in restaurants.