RUSH: There’s a great column today in the American Spectator by Jeffrey Lord, who writes some good stuff. It’s a list that is very thorough and it’s comprehensive of all the recent liberal failures. I’m going to print it out. I’m going to share aspects of it with you, because once you go through it and read it, when it’s right in front of your face, you ask yourself, ‘Why in the world does anybody vote for these people?’ It’s a psychology thing. It cannot be rooted in issues, and it can’t be rooted in success because they haven’t had any. Nothing they do works, certainly not in the last 30 years: the War on Poverty, the Great Society, all these things. All these government programs that are bankrupt and spending wasteful amounts of money, are not solving the problems in the first place. Why would anybody support them? Look at the fiascoes we get with all government bureaucracies. Look at the recent passport fiasco. You want these people running your health care? Why would anybody? It’s beyond me. It really is. If people are actually thinking and engaged, why in the world would you want to put a woman like Mrs. Clinton — who’s never run a business, who doesn’t know diddly-squat about the oil business, about the health care business — in charge of any of it? But a lot of Democrats do. Barbara Boxer was on MSNBC Live this morning with the anchorette Norah O’Donnell, and O’Donnell says, ‘Why do you think so many Republicans are opposed to such a bill cutting emissions, et cetera?’
BOXER: They range from [Senator] Jim Inhofe, who is my ranking member, who says, ‘It’s the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.’ If it is, I don’t know why. And I think that his comments are getting increasingly rare around here. When the scientists told us that HIV caused AIDS, we didn’t turn away from it. When the scientists told us that tobacco caused lung cancer, we didn’t turn away from it. Oh, yes, a few still say that isn’t true, but we have the same kind of consensus on global warming, and we have to avert the catastrophe that could hit us if we do nothing.
RUSH: There’s nothing you can do. That’s the whole point. Alaska may be warming up, but it’s not because of us. It’s the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. There are natural reasons for this. It warms and cools. There’s nothing we can do about it. ‘What would be the purpose for the hoax?’ You think we’re idiots here, Mrs. Boxer? The purpose for the hoax is to raise taxes, reduce lifestyles, and try to control as many aspects of people’s lives as you can!
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RUSH: In the Washington Post today, Juliet Eilperin writes the story: ‘Climate is a Risky Issue for Democrats.’ I saw this, I said, ‘What? This can’t possibly be in the Washington Post.’ ‘All of the leading Democrat contenders for the presidency are committed to a set of cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. That would change the way Americans light their homes, fuel their automobiles, and do their jobs, costing billions and billions of dollars in short-term but potentially the candidates say, saving even more in the decades to follow.’ Right. Just like they never get it right every time they announce a new government program, of what it’s going to cost. ‘The strong medicine Edwards and his fellow candidates are selling, an 80% cut in greenhouse gases from 1990s levels by 2050 tracks with a plan espoused by some scientists, but it is a plan that will require a wholesale transformation of the nation’s economy and society,’ and that’s exactly why they want to do it. What are we going to transform from? We are capitalists. We are primarily a capitalist economy and a capitalist country. We’re going to transform from that in our economy and our society. It’s exactly what they want.
‘By 2015,’ listen, this is the Washington Post, ‘Americans could be paying 30% more for natural gas in their homes, even more for electricity. At the same time, the cost of coal could quadruple and crude oil prices could rise by an additional $24 a barrel.’ I’ll bet you oil, if these guys do what they say they’re going to do, is going to be 200 bucks a barrel in five years, not by 2015. If these guys get anywhere close, you’re going to see $200-a-barrel oil. ”I’d be the first to tell you, this is not necessarily the greatest political calculation,’ Edwards acknowledges in an interview. ‘No matter what the politics are, there’s such a moral responsibility to address the issue, we’ve just got to do it.” While Democrats are out working to outdo each other on climate change, Bill Richardson and so forth getting in the game. This Washington Post story is warning them. That’s what this is. ‘Climate a Risky Issue for Democrats.’ Yeah, it’s just like tax increases. This is just a way to increase taxes without saying so and hide it behind some virtuous, save-the-planet garbage. Chuck Rangel at least had the honesty to come out there and say, ‘You’re not paying nearly enough, and I’m going to soak you.’ So we’ve also got a story here. Mickey Kaus — this is in his blog — is worried about the Democrat Party’s position on immigration. We had a couple of stories yesterday. Immigration is a tough, tough, tough issue for Democrats, as Mrs. Clinton’s slip-sliding on driver’s licenses for illegals in New York illustrates. The Democrats are off the charts on both of these issues, and the media is starting to warn them about it. That’s what the Washington Post story really is all about.
Matt in Grand Rapids, Michigan, nice to have you on the program, sir, welcome.
CALLER: Hey, Rush, dittos. How you doing?
RUSH: Fine, sir. Never better.
CALLER: Well, sounds like you’re having a fine day. I — I wanted to point out something, and that is every time you talk about the global warming issue, I happen to think that you’re correct, but if you are — if you were wrong, how come most people don’t refute it, or how come I don’t hear many people calling in to refute your claims? Because I — I listen to you all the time, and I — I do not hear people calling in refuting what you have to say.
RUSH: Well, you know, that’s true on pretty much everything.
CALLER: Well, that’s — you know.
RUSH: Well, it is. I mean, they call me names. They can call me names outside of this broadcast. You know, it’s the usual. They can’t. No liberal can get into the arena of ideas with a conservative and win the argument. So they don’t even try.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: It’s just, ‘Let’s assault the character. Let’s try to destroy the ability to do business. Let’s try to destroy the credibility of these successful conservative people. Let’s do the Fairness Doctrine. Let’s shut them up because they cannot defeat us.’ Look, if you still have any doubts that global warming is a political issue, ask yourself why it cuts right down the line left and right like every other issue does. There have been liberals calling here about global warming, and they don’t discuss the specifics of it. They talk about it: ‘We’ve gotta do it to save the planet!’ They don’t even know. They cannot cite facts or reasons, other than the usual propaganda they get in Gore’s movie, which a judge has found, what, nine factual errors and misleading statements in. They don’t have to know the details. Liberals do not have to have substance behind their beliefs. It’s all feelings. It’s all oriented toward power. It’s all oriented toward defeating Republicans. It’s all about big government. That’s all they care about. It’s not about facts and figures, being right or wrong. Well, it’s about being right. In their sense, right defined by whatever they think, whether or not there are facts to support it. If there are no facts, they’ll make up their own facts. They do it constantly.
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RUSH: Cody, Flint, Michigan, welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hey, Rush. How you doing?
RUSH: Just fine, sir. Thank you.
CALLER: Greetings from Flint. It’s snowing here today, so there’s not too much global warming happening here.
RUSH: In fact, there’s a big cold front headed up the Great Lakes. In the Northeast this weekend, snows, and heavy rains in coastal New England.
CALLER: Yeah, lots of snow predicted for the next few days, but my point is my wife and I have a 12-year-old Rush baby, by the way. We’ve been listening since 1989.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: We started in Louisville, Kentucky. We got transferred up here, and my son is in seventh grade, and he came home the other night and said to his mother, ‘Mom, guess what we watched in science class today?’ She said, ‘What?’ He said, ‘An Inconvenient Truth, by Algore.’ Of course, Colin’s been raised as a Rush baby, and we keep him informed that it’s consensus only, and said, ‘Well, what do you think?’ He goes, ‘Well, it’s very convincing.’ So it kind of proves your point. A lot of brainwashing is going on in our public schools up here.
RUSH: I know. They were showing it here in Florida and in one instance the parents were told they had to go and watch it with the kids or the kids would suffer grade consequences. Pure pap. Nothing but propaganda. Of course, Algore on the Today show yesterday says, ‘We gotta get rid of this journalism tactic that covers both sides of the story. This story’s too important. We gotta get rid of that journalism model.’ So he’s trying to intimidate the media into ignoring the people who have evidence that all these claims are bogus and not rooted in science.
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RUSH: Beverly in San Antonio, Texas, we go to you before the break. Welcome to the EIB Network.
CALLER: Hi. How are you?
RUSH: Hi.
CALLER: Thank you for taking my call. I just wanted to say, I remember back in the seventies, when I was about ten or so that Newsweek and all the network media were talking about the coming ice age within the next 30 years. So that would mean we’re in the ice age. We should be right now. They were wrong back then. Why are we all buying into this global warming now?
RUSH: I don’t know how many people are. See, when I hear Algore go on the Today show and he demands that journalists stop covering the side that’s opposed to this, I sense a little panic, because if he were really confident that they were going to sell this and everybody in the world was going to buy it, he wouldn’t care what the opposition said because it would be so small, but he’s trying to squelch the opposition here. I’m not sure how many people actually buy this. I know a lot of kids do. See, that’s the danger. You heard the woman before Congress, and all these little kids that have been forced to watch the movie that Algore made.
CALLER: Yes, and I remember being terrified, as a child, just from seeing that on the cover of Newsweek and not really understanding it. So I can understand the terror that they’re creating.
RUSH: Wait a minute. When you were ten, you were reading Newsweek? Or was it just in the dentist’s office when you went and you saw the cover?
CALLER: (laughter) I saw the cover.
RUSH: Yeah. Well, the media’s been scaring people since the media was founded.
CALLER: Yes. And I had another question. Are most of these people that are pushing this movement down our throat, are they like Darwinists? Do you believe that they believe in that? Because if they are, if global warming happens, we will either adapt or die out.
RUSH: That’s a pretty good question because obviously they are Darwinists, all these clowns that believe in evolution. They’re scientists, quote, unquote. Going Biblical will cancel their grants. So they have to be Darwinists, and yet at the same time they’re saying we’re not going to be able to adapt.
CALLER: Exactly.
RUSH: We’re not going to be able to adapt.
CALLER: You don’t have it both ways.
RUSH: If you’ve got a slavish media on-your-side that exists to simply promulgate your agenda, then you can say whatever you want without fear anybody’s going to ask you a question. Mrs. Clinton’s a great example. She finally got a question on an issue she was not prepared for, and we saw, and are seeing, the outcome. Thanks very much, Beverly.