RUSH: This first paragraph here, folks, is going to make you retch. It’s by Michael Hirsh, Newsweek, an Internet exclusive. ‘There he was again on the world stage — in Oslo this time — celebrating his Nobel Peace Prize with singer Melissa Etheridge and actress Uma Thurman, the Hollywood hottie who called him ‘adorable’ and said listening to him talk was ‘like watching a beautiful racehorse run.” Retch time. ‘But Al Gore isn’t running. Which raises the question: maybe Gore’s gotten a little too adorable — too comfortable in his role as a globe-trotting guru. What about his own damn country? …’ Writes Michael Hirsh: ‘What about his own damn country? Why isn’t Al Gore — Nobel laureate and enviro rock star, embodiment of the alternative history that never was, winner of the largest popular-vote total in US presidential history [sic] — seeking the job that many people still think should have been his in 2000? Yes, we’ve all heard that Gore’s reached a kind of peace within himself,’ blah, blah, blah. But Mr. Hirsh says, ‘The White House is the place to battle global warming.’ Mr. Hirsh, if I may be so bold as to educate and inform you, I’m going to tell you as I did yesterday precisely and exactly why Algore will never run for president, certainly not in 2008. You can make book, and it is precisely because he would have to debate global warming, and he will not do it, because he cannot win the debate. Global warming is a religion. It is not subject to debate. It is a hoax. Therefore, it’s a trick. It’s not subject to debate. He will not debate it. That is the only reason, or the big one, why he will not run. Get over it, Mr. Hirsh.
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RUSH: Pat, Shelby Township, Michigan, I’m glad you waited. Welcome to Open Line Friday.
CALLER: Rush, thanks for taking my call.
RUSH: Yes, sir.
CALLER: Calling from Michigan and we’re surviving despite our liberal leaders up here, but I’m a little conflicted. I guess this call goes in the Global Warming Stack of stuff, if I may, but I’m developing some wind farms, and I really do not believe in man-made global warming, and yesterday the energy bill they — Congress stripped out the production tax credit for developing wind farms.
RUSH: They also stripped out the taxes on oil companies. This energy bill, you’re making the mistake of assuming this is for real. Everything the Democrats are doing is simply bending over and grabbing the ankles for MoveOn.org.
CALLER: Oh, no, no, I understand, and you know what? That smear letter against Reid, I was so ecstatic when you did it, I loved it, but I was really pulling for the Democrats to get this thing through even though I’m on the other side of the aisle on the conservative side on the taxes, so I’m actually conflicted here, and very disappointed that Reid couldn’t pull it off. But they’re really having a tough time getting anything done up there, and they’re an embarrassment. You’re doing a great job —
RUSH: Of course, they’re having a tough time getting anything done because the stuff they’re trying to get done is not anything the American people want, including getting out of Iraq. If the American people wanted us out of Iraq, the Democrats would not have failed at 45 or 50 resolutions so far. Tell me about this wind farm business. I know you’re in the business.
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: So you hope it succeeds.
CALLER: Yeah —
RUSH: What is it supposed to do, what is a wind farm supposed to help alleviate?
CALLER: A wind farm just generates electricity. It’s another source of energy.
RUSH: What if there’s no wind?
CALLER: Well, that’s a good question. You don’t get paid.
RUSH: Well, how do you make wind? See, we’re still beholden to nature here.
CALLER: No, absolutely, and the dirty secret is, a lot of these utilities don’t like the wind. It’s very difficult to plan in their assumption of what –.
RUSH: It doesn’t generate enough to run a power plant, does it?
CALLER: It’s not consistent, but the argument is if the wind is blowing they can then blow off some of their coal, or oil, or natural gas fires. So it kind of supplements —
RUSH: Supplemental, yeah.
CALLER: From the standpoint you have a substantial tax credit, the investment is made to develop wind farms. Without it they really financially are very difficult to make sense. So, you know, as a developer —
RUSH: Without a tax credit —
CALLER: It’s extremely difficult to make it work.
RUSH: Absolutely. I know we subsidize a lot of things here, but I’m struck. Here we are, this week we had a million people without power in the great Midwest of this country, in the dead of winter and they were freezing, and many of them had to leave their homes to avoid, in some cases, maybe freezing to death, or at least great discomfort. We lost power through the ice storm. The environmentalist wackos are suggesting that we get rid of fossil fuels: coal, oil, and the derivatives. If we do, you may as well in the wintertime figure on an ice storm every night without the ice storm. This is a world that is governed by, powered by the free flow of oil and fossil fuels at market prices. And nothing’s going to change it. There’s not a single thing out there that’s going to change that. The idea that oil is some sort of poison and that we must stop using it is ignorance, and, again, ignorance is the most expensive thing we pay for in this country, the ignorance of way too many people. We’ve got glaring illustrations of what the world would be like without fossil fuels, coal and oil, and yet that’s where the environmentalists are trying to take us. It is absurd.