RUSH: The BP oil spill, the Obama administration and Obama’s personal reaction to it. Folks, I hope you remember that about a half a week, maybe a week before I left, I told you they want this disaster. I told you that this is something that’s going to play right into their hands. He’s gonna use this
This speech from the Oval Office tonight is not about the oil spill. It’s not about BP. It is about Obama. The whole purpose for this is Obama’s plummeting approval numbers and an attempt to get them back up. We have learned so much about early offers of assistance from foreign countries that were rejected ’cause the paperwork wasn’t done correctly or so forth and so on.
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RUSH: Okay. Let’s get down to the matters at hand regarding the future of the United States of America. We are a great nation at risk in a dangerous world. Our threats have always come externally. They have always come from outside our borders. Today the greatest threats facing our country come from within our own borders. It is simply unconscionable how this president and his administration, his regime, have used this oil spill, this natural disaster, to advance a political agenda. And you’re going to see the culmination of it tonight in his address to the nation as the AKOTUS, the Ass Kicker of the United States. No longer is he POTUS. He’s got his Bay of Rigs out there, he has shut down the Bay of Rigs, he is going to destroy a way of life in the Gulf of Mexico.
Meanwhile, the Brazilians are continuing to drill with US financial aid off their coast. The Vietnamese and the Chinese and the Mexicans are continuing to drill in association with the Cubans in the Gulf of Mexico. We are going to shut down by order of the president of the United States. Let me ask you a question. When a passenger airplane crashes, do we cancel all flights? Do we stop building jet airplanes? We do not. And yet we have shut down offshore drilling. Everybody says Obama has delayed his response, he doesn’t know what he’s doing, he’s a little incompetent. That may well be. But, folks, and I know this is hard to believe, I know people don’t want to get their arms around this and don’t want to believe this. I’m telling you, I told you many times before I left here last week, this disaster is a fortuitous opportunity for this regime. The more oil on the beaches, the better. The more video of birds dying because of oil, the better.
Put your thinking caps on. We know this administration hates conventional energy sources. Despite the job losing and expense aspects of it, they want to go so-called green energy with wind and solar and all of this, and now to take the occasion of this disaster to further wreck the US economy and add a BTU tax. This is essentially what Clinton wanted to do when he was first inaugurated in 1993. He went after a BTU tax, which is a carbon tax, which is what Obama’s going to do here. It’s what he’s going to propose. You couple this with the massive tax increases that are coming on January 1st, 2011. I saw a story the other day, folks, the airline industry — this may shock you — the airline industry as a whole is reporting profits this year of two-and-a-half billion dollars. The airline industry as a whole has rarely posted a profit. Individual airlines have. Now, it matters to me not what the reason for the profit is. Maybe it’s because they’re charging for carry-on luggage or charging for the peanuts, it doesn’t matter. They’re reporting the profit in this year and they’re going to take it in this year, do you know why? Because of the tax increases coming next year on investments, investment income; capital gains is going up.
Everybody who can, every business, every individual who can is going to take as much money that is due them in 2011 and beyond in this year. It’s much like when Clinton raised taxes retroactively in 1993, I’ll never forget, Michael Eisner who was at the time running Disney sold $192 million worth of Disney stock in December prior to the new year to escape the new taxes. That’s going to be happening throughout this country. Individuals, businesses, people who can accelerate their income to this year are going to do it, which is going to depress economic activity even more next year with the increase of taxes that’s coming, health care and otherwise. It’s just unconscionable what is being done to the once great engine of freedom that was the United States private sector. Now we’ve gotta request another $50 billion bailout for teachers. You know, in the federal government when they talk about the various — like the Department of the Interior, if they’re facing budget cuts, they’ll always trot out the Washington Monument excuse. ‘Well, budget cuts, we’ll have to close the Washington Monument.’ And of course citizens, ‘No, you can’t close the Washington Monument. Why, give ’em their budget.’ The same thing that locals do. ‘Gosh, budget cuts, have to cut the fireman budget, have to get rid of policemen, might even have to get rid of some teachers.’
We don’t have the money to be bailing any of these institutions out, and many of the institutions and groups of people that we are bailing out are one of the reasons why we’re in the mess that we’re in. They are in the public sector producing nothing. They’re siphoning off the productivity of people in the private sector via their taxes, and, meanwhile, there’s no end in sight for this unemployment. You saw that home sales are down; consumer spending surprisingly plummeted in May. Not surprising to anybody keeping their head above water and looking at this. I’ll tell you what, you know, it turns out back in the 2008 presidential campaign that Hillary Clinton was right, her ads were right. Obama was not ready on day one. Obama was not able to answer the phone at three a.m. How many months did he have to dither over sending the requested troops in Afghanistan? How many months has he dithered on the oil spill? When has he ever answered the phone?
It reminds me of Clinton at Normandy. Somebody put some rocks on the beach, there aren’t any rocks there. He puts them in the shape of a cross with a lone battleship on the horizon. Everything is for show. What they are interested in doing here is getting approval numbers up because they are plummeting. Gallup has him as low as he’s ever been. So here’s Barack ‘Whose Ass’ Obama, known now as AKOTUS, the Ass Kicker of the United States, with his Bay of Rigs. And you notice, folks, how the very same people who are enraptured because Obama’s now talking tough guy, they wanted him to talk tough. These are the same people who were appalled when George Bush spoke tough after 9/11. He said that enraged the world, that cowboy attitude of Bush, it caused the rest of the world to hate us, but now these same people want the weasel Obama to sound tough, and Obama has responded. He’s going to kick ass, he’s going to look around to find some ass to kick and he’s going to do it, call in that inner cowboy and they finally got Obama’s inner cowboy. In fact, didn’t Obama even complain about George W. Bush talking tough? But of course, folks, it makes far more sense to talk tough to an oil company that’s trying to provide more energy for our country’s needs than to be tough on terrorists who are trying to destroy us.
In fact, if a US soldier had done to a murderous terrorist what Bob Etheridge did to this student, that soldier would be court-martialed. He would be facing a trial. We had it happen. Navy SEALs on trial for giving a bloody lip to a terrorist. And here’s Bob Etheridge and the Dems excuse it, he was being harassed by zealous members of the right wing. It’s just amazing. So we’re supposed to believe here that Obama knows whose ass to kick, when he doesn’t even have the guts to name the enemy in the war on terror. Oh, yeah, we can make an enemy out of BP, damn right we can, that’s easy. The left knows how to make an enemy out of private sector companies. Isn’t it a damn good thing — I’m dead serious about this. We have heard for decades about obscene profits in the oil business. We have heard about how they have milked the consumer with ungodly high gasoline prices. Isn’t it a good thing that the oil companies sometimes make such windfall profits? Otherwise how could BP pay for all the damage done to the Gulf? You’ve seen the numbers, they’re going to have billions here, hundred billion there, they gotta pay this liability — where are they gonna get the money?
Isn’t it a good thing that they have some profits here to deal with this? Or does Obama want to put them in a receivership; does he want them to go bankrupt? Has anybody in government suggested using any of the taxes that they have gotten from oil windfall profits to clean up the spill or pay for reparations? I mean the government has been one of the largest beneficiaries of oil company success via high taxes. Do we hear Obama promising an escrow account from US financial institutions, from taxes generated by the taxes on oil companies? I don’t know, folks. It’s just maddening to watch all this take place. I know I keep saying this, but it needs to be repeated. To see a media that has totally abandoned its constitutional role to now just openly become advocates and defenders of a particularly dangerous left-wing regime. As for the damage in the Gulf, I think the politicians, the news media, are largely to blame for the downturn in the Gulf’s economy. When you’ve got Obama, who doesn’t even like capitalism, when you’ve got Obama down on the beach urging people to come down, what does that tell you about the job the media has done in poisoning the well?
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RUSH: Elizabeth in Pensacola, Florida, you’re first as we go to the phones. Welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Thank you so very, very much for taking my call. I’ve lived in Pensacola for 17 years. The way of life down here is dying, Rush. Our bayous are dying. Our estuaries are dying. The pelicans we see on the beaches are dying. The cleanup is there, but it’s rather funny and pathetic while these beaches are not being cleaned up, and there’s no reason on God’s green earth why this oil — I hope I don’t start crying — should ever have made it to our shores. It is an environmental disaster that I don’t think people who don’t live here can grasp what this looks like, what it smells like and feels like. I’ve been out to Perdido Key which is out a little bit west of Pensacola, and you see these tarballs and you touch them and you’re thinking, ‘My God, this made it to our shores.’
RUSH: Now, Elizabeth, is anything you’re hearing anybody at any level of authority saying making you feel better about it or more hopeful?
CALLER: No. Actually, when he was here today — he came in yesterday and it was an absolute traffic nightmare because they did not inform people as to what roads were being closed. People are mad, Rush. They’re sad. It’s almost a state of mourning when you talk about the beaches here and the estuaries. I live very close to a bayou, and we have one boom that we’ve been provided. There are people going around and cutting…
RUSH: You know, the Dutch offered us a bunch of ships and booms three days after the spill was discovered and we rejected it. Their paperwork wasn’t right.
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We told you this. We told you this before the law was voted on, which means these companies are going to have to dump them. They’re going to want to dump them anyway. This is how the public option is going to be created. Yet Obama told you, ‘You like your company, you like your doctor, you like your plan? You get to keep it.’ No! ‘Fifty-one percent of employee plans do not meet the guidelines’ in Obamacare. From the AP on June the 14th: ‘Employers Expect Medical Costs to Jump in 2011,’ along with tax increases and everything else. Now, I’m confused here, folks. Taxes and costs are going up? I mean, I thought national health care was going to save all of this money and bring the debt down to zero and make people healthier and make everybody wealthy! I thought all of these magical things were going to happen with this new health care plan.
And here from IBD, Investor’s Business Daily on June 11th: ‘Keep Your Health Plan Under Overhaul? Probably Not, Gov’t Analysis Concludes,’ and this is again: 51% of private plans, business plans will not meet Obama guidelines. We are told that the economy is finally rebounding. Yeah? June 11th, last Friday: ‘Retail Sales Show Surprise Slump as Consumers Struggle.’ What’s the surprise? Somebody show me where disposable income is up. Somebody show me where wages are up. Somebody show me where employment is up. Why would anybody with half a brain think that retail sales were gonna explode? We don’t have any genuine good employment news. :Temporary census hires were accounting for 90% of the jobs in May. So now we’re being told that taxing our energy supply with a massive carbon tax is gonna cause us to grow the economy. Yeah, just like health care overhaul was going to lower premiums, let us keep our doctors, bring down the deficit.
Let me ask you this: If the majority of Americans come to truly believe such nonsense — that cap and trade, taxing carbon emissions will actually grow the economy — then we are in dangerous times. Voltaire said many things. Of the many things that Voltaire said, the French philosopher: ‘Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.’ Now, I’m also hearing people say Obama isn’t doing anything. Folks, I don’t know how people can say that Obama’s not doing anything. He’s up to his ears. He’s over his ears in this! Some people said, ‘He’s up to his ears.’ He’s over his ears, not just his head. He’s over his ears in this whole thing. But to say that he’s a doing anything… Look, his ban on oil drilling is estimated to be killing at least 40,000 jobs in the Gulf of Mexico and in Alaska. Anybody think this is just stupidity, ignorance?
The Brazilians are going nuts. In fact, their oil company, Petrobras, is doing great. Buy their stock, folks. That’s an oil company going to go through the roof. We’re paying federal money, George Soros money to help ’em drill. Mexico is still drilling. And this ban, this ban is indefinite. This oil drilling ban is indefinite. So all that high-tech equipment, the rigs, the top personnel, they’re going to have to go someplace else for jobs — like Brazil or Mexico or Venezuela. And it will be years before they come back. Do not think this is accidental, and tonight tell me he’s not doing anything. He is marching on toward one of his immediate objectives which was the destruction of the US private sector. Now, maybe I’ll cut him some slack. Maybe he doesn’t think he’s going to destroy it. The Chicago way… (interruption)
No, no, no. The Chicago way — Barone’s written about this. The Chicago way is that you go ahead and you just savage the private sector, and you beat ’em up. You make under-the-table deals with them. You tell ’em, ‘The voters want theater, so I’m going to be ripping you a new one each and every day but under the table we’re going to make deals and you’re going to be fine.’ There was also America to bail out Chicago. Well, the Chicago way has been brought to Washington. Who’s going to bail America out? This guy… I think liberals always think, for whatever stupid reason, that the golden goose is always going to be golden. They think that a rich people are always going to be rich despite their efforts to tax them into poverty and that therefore there’s always going to be money to get when there isn’t any money.
We’re printing it. We’re borrowing it. The ChiCom share of our national debt is at an all-time high now, news as of this morning. There’s no reason to shut down oil drilling all over the Gulf and in Alaska just because of this. As I said, we don’t stop making airplanes because one crashes. We don’t ground and put the airlines out of business because an airplane crashes. That’s the equivalent of what we’re doing here. Has anybody suggested, by the way, that the Obama administration’s federal inspectors might have gone easy on BP with their safety inspections in exchange for the massive campaign contributions BP gave to Obama and the Democrats? I mean, it’s hundreds of millions of dollars over the course of months, millions of dollars BP campaign contributions. Just like Goldman Sachs and all these Wall Street firms were giving big, big donations.
Here’s Raymond in Livermore, California. Raymond, you’re next on the EIB Network. Great to have you here, sir.
CALLER: Great to have you back in the institute, professor.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: Congratulations on your wedding. You mentioned the president’s talk tonight. The mouthpiece of this administration has said, ‘Never let a good crisis go to waste,’ and as you have played on this show: Obama, when he was a senator, said he wasn’t bothered by three-dollar-a-gallon gas. He was just unhappy that it went up so fast.
RUSH: Four dollars. Four-dollar-a-gallon. He wasn’t unhappy with four dollar. He just he didn’t like it going there so fast. You’re right.
CALLER: So we keep hearing about renewable energy, we keep hearing about green energy, about CO2-free energy. What we don’t hear about is abundant energy and inexpensive energy, which is what drives a great nation. It’s why we have grown so quickly in a short amount of time.
RUSH: Well, no. There’s no abundance of anything. There is no more American exceptionalism. Our salad days are behind us. It’s time for us to pay the piper. We got rich by stealing from everybody else around the world. We made the rest of the world poor while we got rich. No, no, no! It’s time we got our heads chopped off a little bit here to cut us down to size. Abundance? American exceptionalism? Positive things about America? It doesn’t compute with this administration. When do you hear it? When do you hear wonderful things about this nation from anybody in elected office, particularly on the Democrat side? You don’t.
RUSH: A friend of mine sends a note: ‘I defy you to find any good news anywhere.’ The only person out there who has good news is Jimmy Carter. He’s about to be supplanted as the worst president of the century by Obama. Other than Jimmy Carter having good news, nobody has any out there. It’s like I said when I opened the program. Obama is giving Marxist professors a bad name because reality always spoils a leftist rant in a class brimming with young skulls full of mush. They can talk about all the theory, and then reality hits and beats ’em upside the head, and all this theory of the brilliance of Marxism is going up in oil.
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RUSH: Richard in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, I have about a minute and a half here, sir, but I wanted to get to you. Hello.
CALLER: Hey, how you doing?
RUSH: Very good, thank you.
CALLER: Congratulations on your wedding.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: I just wanted to talk about, you know, it seems like Obama is falling back on his attorney skills, because it seems like he’s ambulance chasing every issue that’s out there, from the Gulf where I’m at right now which is getting worse by the day, to the financial situation.
RUSH: Wow. You know, it’s a good point, it’s a good point, chasing the ambulance, making sure the unions are protected. I just saw, by the way, they’ve had to suspend — I hope this is temporary — they’ve had to suspend the oil collection efforts ’cause there’s a fire on the surface aboard one of the ships that they’re using to collect some of the oil that’s being skimmed from the leak. Here we are on the verge of Obama’s Oval Office speech, provided he can find it. I think it’s been such a long time since he’s been in the Oval Office, it will be interesting to see if he actually gets there tonight for this address to the nation about how he intends to further damage our energy sector.