America Must Hear Truth About Oil

RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, my computer IT guy, Scott Schaefer, sent me an e-mail note about 7:59 last night, said, ‘You gotta turn on the History Channel because they’re doing one of their Modern Marvels series,’ and it was a show devoted to everything that we get from oil and how it is made. I watched this thing last night and I was mesmerized. In a broad base, I knew it all, but to see it spelled out and to see how the refining process takes place, to see all of the ancillary products — for example, ladies, do you know how Maybelline, the cosmetics company, came to be in existence? Some woman decided to mix some product with Vaseline, which is a derivative of oil, in a fascinating way, and Maybelline — her name was Mabel — Maybelline was born. You put lipstick on? It wouldn’t be possible without oil. Eye shadow, foundation, whatever the makeup stuff is, wouldn’t be possible without oil. Plastics, I mean, it just is incredible. When you watch this show — and I’m going to go back through it. I would love to get permission from the History Channel to play the audio of this, or some audio from it because it was profound.

Toward the end of their show they had to do the politically correct stuff and start showing us the windmills, but even doing that, they made it plain 1% of our energy now comes from wind. They made it plain we’re nowhere near replacing it. We all instinctively know this. When you see it spelled out this way, and you see what we would lose if — like Obama is saying we want to be off of oil in ten years. Folks, it’s not possible and remain the country we are. I mean, not even close. We’ll have to stop building roads, at least with asphalt. It would be the end of most plastics, containers. There’s so much that is derived from a single barrel of oil that it would blow your mind to see this presented to you with pictures, rat-tat-tat, so I’m going to watch it again when I have time. I got really busy last night after it was over. I intended to do this last night and didn’t get to it. I’m going to take written notes of everything that they say and I’m going to come in here with a list. By the way, I think it’s going to be rebroadcast Saturday… (interruption) what are you chuckling at in there? It would be great for kids to see this. It would be great for stupid liberal Democrats to see this. It would be great for Obama to watch this.

You know, I sit here and I wonder, how in the world — I was thinking about this the other day — you go back to JFK, what’s happened from the time John Fitzgerald Kennedy said, ‘Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country’? What’s happened since then to cause us to get to the point where both political candidates are telling us what government must do for us? It’s not just a liberal problem, and one of the things is that political leadership has just vanished, and what we got instead is pandering. If the American people don’t want oil, fine, we’ll get rid of oil. The American people don’t want to go to war, fine, we won’t go to war. If the American people want everybody to get two homeless people off the street and put ’em in their house, fine, that’s what we’ll do, but there’s no leadership whatsoever. There’s absolutely none with any guts or courage to counter any of this, and so it’s a pander race, and it’s very frustrating. The problem is I don’t think a majority of Americans are the ones being pandered to. It’s a minority of Americans. If the majority of Americans had checked out our economy would have stopped growing. If a majority of Americans had decided that the best way to satisfy their wants and needs was for the government to provide it, then we would already be showing a dramatic economic slowdown. I refuse to believe that a majority of the people have accepted the notion that the government’s there to do things for us. Way too many people that have adopted that but I refuse to believe it’s a majority.

So the point is that we’re pandering to a minority of people because they’re the victims, of course, and we feel sorry for them. The political candidates want to make sure that they let everybody know that they can relate to the suffering, all of the hardship that’s out there and we’re becoming a nation of whiners and babies. Phil Gramm says that and, bam, McCain throws him off the list. But you know it and I know it. It’s a big problem. When you get to talking about getting off of oil in ten years, that alone should be a disqualifier for somebody to be qualified as competent to be president of the United States. It’s not possible. I’ll tell you what, you watch this show, and I’m going to find out when it actually re-airs. I’ve got it here in the computer somewhere, Saturday or Sunday night, History Channel. You watch this show, and you will come to the inescapable conclusion that there is no way that we can get off of oil for 50 or 75 years, if then, because the elements of our economy and culture, the things that you use, that we all use and do in our daily lives that are now considered necessities that we take for granted, they’re not even luxuries, some of them are. When you see this, you, too, will be beat upside the head.

By the way, they have all of these experts, all these professionals at the refineries explaining what they do, explaining how the process works. It’s just fascinating. It let me know that Big Oil itself could be doing a much better PR job explaining its own business. (interruption) What now, Snerdley? I’m getting some of the weirdest looks on the other side of the glass. Hm-hm. Hm-hm. Right — no, no, no. Snerdley is saying that the solution to all this is very simple, if we just ban makeup. Ban makeup, Nancy Pelosi would have to come around quickly. It’s an interesting joke. At any rate, there’s also an interview that Rex Tillerson, the CEO of ExxonMobil — I think ExxonMobil has the best names of their CEOs. Rex Tillerson, does that not just sound like a perfect name for a guy running a big oil company? Rex Tillerson. I forget the name of the guy he replaced who retired, and everybody got mad because he got the $400 million golden parachute when he quit, but had a great name, too, and he had a great face. He had a face right out of the early 1900s when all these big barons were sort of bulbous and that was a sign of success back then when you were obese or overweight, that was a sign that you really were living the good life. Today, of course, if you’re rail thin and could be pushed over by the wind from a windmill then you are considered to be the epitome of in good health.

But the interview with Charles Gibson on ABC, and they write this up at the ABC website: ‘ExxonMobil CEO and chairman Rex Tillerson defended his company’s staggering $11.7 billion in profits for the second quarter, saying that the company’s earnings reflected the magnitude of its business operation. ‘I saw someone characterize our profits the other day in terms of $1,400 in profit per second. Well, they also need to understand we paid $4,000 a second in taxes, and we spent $15,000 a second in cost,’ Tillerson told ABC News’ Charles Gibson. ‘We spend $1 billion a day just running our business. So this is a business where large numbers are just characteristic of it.” So they’re starting to do a little bit better on their own PR. Okay, so the profit was $1,400 a second, taxes $4,000 a second, $15,000 a second in costs, a billion dollars a day just to run the business. He goes on, ”I can understand why people are very upset and why they’re very worried and concerned about their ability to deal with these high prices. It does bother me that much of that is directed at us. Our job is to provide energy, to provide it in a means that is reliable. And we hope we can provide it in a means that’s convenient as well to the consumer.’ When asked whether he agreed with Phil Gramm, Sen. John McCain’s former economic adviser, who labeled America as a ‘nation of whiners,’ Tillerson said he empathizes with American consumers. ‘I don’t think there’s any question that if these prices — $3.50, $4 a gallon for gasoline — and the follow-through effects on the cost of electricity [are] causing a lot of problems for a lot of Americans. … Their budgets just are very difficult for them to accommodate this.”

Right, which, ladies and gentlemen, once again cements the notion that the economy could be the Republican issue, and particularly the price of gasoline, because the Democrats — by the way, I have two pieces in my stack today, one from the New Republic. They’re getting worried. They’re worried about their convention and they’re worried that Obama is blowing the economy issue. I forget who this author is, ‘When’s the last time we heard Obama talk about Social Security? When’s the last time we heard Obama talking about national health care? He’s losing the economy issue. We gotta get back to the economy.’ They’re very concerned that they’re losing a traditional issue for them.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Some interesting tidbits from the website, The History Channel website, on this program. I have a little overview here. If we stop driving our cars tomorrow — if every American stopped driving a car tomorrow, for good — we would still need five million barrels of oil a day to supply our other needs: rubber, plastic, nylon, aerosols, rosins, solvents, lubricants. None can exist without oil. In fact, even these windmills and all of these alternative energy things still need some form of oil for lubrication of the moving parts.

‘You will discover how a cutting-edge recycling technique breathes new life into used motor oil.’ They re-refine it. They do the refining process in reverse, and they ‘take you back to the 1870s to see how an unemployed whale oil salesman turning a greasy oil by-product into a household staple Vaseline,’ which then led to Maybelline. It’s a fascinating program; it really is. It will open everybody’s eyes about the reality and the truth concerning oil, and not our desire for it, but our literal need for the stuff. How much of our society, how much of our lifestyle has been positively impacted by this product; it’s just amazing. So make sure you TiVo it or watch it Saturday night, August 23, seven o’clock Eastern Time, on the History Channel.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Sam in Kalamazoo, Michigan, welcome to the program, sir. Nice to have you with us.

CALLER: Morning. Good afternoon.

RUSH: Good afternoon.

CALLER: I heard your discussion at the top of the show regarding the Modern Marvels show.

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: And my impression was your analysis of that show is exactly dead wrong.

RUSH: Did you see the show?

CALLER: No, but I think I’ve seen it before. I’ve seen a lot of Modern Marvel shows, but the essence of the show is that oil is a precious resource, that it’s critical for many products in our lives, and I mean we all love oil. It does all kinds of wonderful things —

RUSH: We don’t all love oil, that’s the point.

CALLER: I think we do. It’s just that people like me recognize that if we want to keep oil, keep its benefits, what we need to do is aggressively search for alternate forms of energy that will let us make the oil we have last much longer for ourselves and for future generations.

RUSH: Which we are doing. This is the great myth that we are sitting around doing nothing in the field of alternatives or renewables. It’s just the market hasn’t found anything that is anywhere close to replacing or even supplementing oil.

CALLER: Oh, that’s absolutely not true, Rush. I mean wind energy right now is producing tremendous amounts of electricity.

RUSH: No, no, 1%, 1% of the nation’s energy —

CALLER: Well, that’s right now.

RUSH: — is produced by wind. We’re talking right now. We’ve been working on wind energy for how many decades?

CALLER: Not aggressively. Not aggressively, Rush.

RUSH: I’m not criticizing it. I’m saying we need a dose of reality. We’re never going to be able to drive cars with wind. We’re never going to be able to fly airplanes with wind. We’re not going to be able to launch missiles with wind. We’re not going to be able to steer ships. We’re not going to be able to power ships. We’re not going to have a military with wind or with alternatives. Look it, I’m going to cease this right now, ladies and gentlemen, because I fear that my IQ is subject to being damaged. If I spend any more time talking with people who fail to understand, who want to portray oil as an enemy, I really worry I’m going to lose part of my IQ, and if that happens you never know if you’re going to get it back.