RUSH: This is Steven Chu, the Nobel Prize-winning energy secretary, and he was talking about gasoline prices up on Capitol Hill on Tuesday.
CHU: (haltingly) Well, I — I — I think… I… Uh, eh, ay, ah… Absolutely we should be judged on what we’re trying — what we are doing, uhhhh — and I should be judged on my track record when I became secretary of energy. I mean, w-we — we will do everything in our — in our powers to — and we agree that there is great, uh, suffering when the price of gasoline increases in the United States. And so we are very concerned about this. And, uhhh, as, uhhh, I repeatedly said, ummm, in the Department of Energy, the… What we’re tried to do is diversify our energy’s bio transportation so that we have cost-effective means …
CONGRESSMAN ALAN NUNNELEE: But is the overall goal to get our price [down]?
CHU: No. The overall goal is to, uh, decrease our dependence on oil.
RUSH: Does this guy sound like he has a clue? He’s a Nobel Prize winner! “Uh, uh, well… uh… (stammering) Diversify. Uh, uh, uh.” (impression) “Now, just tell me something here, sir. Is our overall goal to get the price of gas down?”
“No, no. We’re not trying to lower the price of gas. We just want to decrease our dependency on oil.”
Newt Gingrich last night with Greta Van Susteren.
GINGRICH: By his own admission, [Chu] wants American prices to be about the European Union level, which would be $9 or $10 a gallon. When he was asked yesterday, he said that he had no intention to try to get gasoline to be less expensive. His goal was to get the American people to go to alternatives. It tells you that, by his standard, the current gas prices are terrific. They’re doing exactly what Obama and Chu want them to do. They’re causing pain for Americans and they hope that will force them into smaller cars and force them into other kinds of vehicles, and I think their strategy is to get to $9- or $10-a-gallon gasoline.
RUSH: And he wasn’t finished…
GINGRICH: Because the president’s now given two speeches in less than a week in which he tries to pretend has a concerned about energy prices. I have a simple test for him: Fire Chu, appoint somebody from the oil industry who knows what they’re doing, have them assigned to go out and produce oil in huge quantities, and they’ll get it done.
RUSH: And Newt’s right. They don’t want additional supplies of oil! They are not into oil. The Koch brothers are, by the way, which is one of the reasons why they are on the Enemies List.
