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Rush Limbaugh

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RUSH: Let’s go audio sound bites eight, nine, and ten, Mike. Well, eight and nine. Because the guy, the CEO of ConocoPhillips — Big Oil — James Mulva was on the Today show today with Matt Lauer, and Matt Lauer said, ‘A year ago you did an interview, you were asked ‘what can keep the price of a gallon of gas under three bucks,’ and you said to get gasoline below three bucks would require a lower oil price. Well, oil represents 60% of the cost of gasoline, you’ve said. So in the last year, a barrel of oil has gone from $75 down to $65. At the same time, gas is up 35 cents a gallon. How can this happen?’

MULVA: Well, Matt, it’s true that gasoline prices move with oil prices, but what’s different compared to last year is that the demand continues to go up. Even with gas prices up over three dollars a gallon, demand continues to go up and that’s really quite surprising. And the issue is, providing supply. We’re running our refineries at capacity, but what’s different today is that we are having difficulty refining and providing the supply, and we’re importing as much as we can, but our imports are down compared last year.

RUSH: We’re importing gasoline. He’s not talking about oil. We are importing gasoline. We don’t have the refining capacity. So Matt Lauer says, ‘Well, oftentimes like this the oil companies get villainized, but the fact of the matter is it’s our fault. I mean again, you don’t want to cast the blame, but the fact is here addicted to gasoline. We’re simply using too much of it. Now we’re paying the price. Isn’t that a fair statement?’

MULVA: Well, in a way it is a fair statement because if you look at the United States, past hundred years or so, we’ve been blessed with plentiful energy supplies, and we’ve provided energy at a very affordable price. But that’s changed. I mean energy supplies are not as available, and the other thing is as a country, we really don’t have a comprehensive energy policy, and that’s what we need.

RUSH: All right. Now, what is this, we’re addicted to gasoline? We are not addicted to gasoline. Oil is the fuel of the freedom and the engine of democracy. Oil is the basis on which our economy is going to grow. We know it’s going to continue to grow. We want it to grow. We want the economy to keep growing. We want it to be such that people become more and more productive, more and more prosperous. Nobody ever talks about wanting the economy to slow down and go into recession. We’re always wanting the economy to grow, and with more people being born and the influx of people. It’s just the natural state of human affairs. You’re not addicted to something that generates that. What he means, you’re addicted, you use it when you don’t need it, use far more than what you need, and you can’t help it, it’s a disease, you can’t stop. It’s absurd to say that we’re addicted to gasoline. People cannot go to work without it, they cannot go to food stores without it, they cannot take kids to school without it. It’s a need far, far more than it’s an addiction. Now we’re going to trying to have this guilt imposed upon us. ‘Why, the prices aren’t coming down because you people are a bunch of sloths. You people are careless; you don’t care what it costs; you don’t care what damage to the earth you’re doing; you have to have your gasoline, you addicts.’ That’s absolutely preposterous. The solution to this is to get rid of all these restrictions that say we can’t find more of our own oil and we can’t build more refineries, get rid of all of that. Understand we’re a growing economy, powerful, the world’s lone superpower, and we’re being assaulted on that basis by people who want to cut us down to size, and they’re using energy as a means of doing it.

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